Royal Commission: Bible Quote Sparks Walkout

By Joanne McCarthy
The Newcastle Herald
December 9, 2013

http://www.theherald.com.au/story/1961855/royal-commission-bible-quote-sparks-walkout/?cs=303



AT first there were howls of anger.

Barrister Peter Gray, SC, for the Catholic Church had barely started quoting from the Gospel of Mark - "Let the little children come to me" - when the public gallery at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Abuse erupted.

 

"You have got to be kidding," was clearly heard. "I can't believe they're quoting the Bible," cried another. People left the room.

And then there was the sound of sobbing. One woman's cries of pain were heard from an outer room as Mr Gray read the Church's opening statement.

On behalf of the Church he acknowledged it had betrayed the trust of children and their parents. He acknowledged it had "sometimes covered up" and protected "wrongdoers". He acknowledged victims were disbelieved and "treated coldly".

In the public gallery were the people who had fought the Church for years to admit those wrongs.

They included Hunter couple Louis and Pamela Pirona, whose son John's suicide in 2012, after "too much pain" as the victim of paedophile priest John Denham, was the catalyst for the royal commission.

It was the first day of the first public hearing into the Catholic Church at the world's first national inquiry into child sexual abuse in all institutions, and the callous, heartless, bloodless arrogance of the Church was on shocking display.

 

But it was the courage of Joan Isaacs that will be remembered. Sexually abused as a teenager, callously treated as an adult, she spoke the truth. And the public gallery cheered.