Brisbane Priest Frank Derriman "Ran Cult-like Group Sexually Abusing Young Girls', Victim Joan Isaacs Tells Royal Commission
NEWS.com.au
SCHOOLTEACHER Joan Isaacs yesterday claimed a Catholic priest ran a cult-like group sexually abusing young girls and gave them the surname Brown, as in Charlie Brown from the Peanuts comic. Her voice wavering, Ms Isaacs told the royal commission into institutionalised responses to child sex abuse in Sydney how one member of the Brown group had Father Frank Derriman’s baby while the priest told them that if they loved God, it was OK to have sex with him because he was God’s representative. He lied that he was terminally ill and wanted to have sex before he died. During holy communion, he put his fingers in her mouth, she said. “Frank Derriman used the Peanut comic as a platform and used the surname Brown in reference to himself, the other three children and me,’’ Mrs Isaacs, who was known as Junkie Brown, said. “(He) created a cult-like group which included myself and three other children.” She said that his actions would now be called grooming. But the royal commission heard that, despite being convicted of indecently assaulting Mrs Isaacs and jailed, Derriman remained technically a priest and it was not until 2011 that the Archbishop of Brisbane wrote to him threatening to begin formal proceedings to have him stripped of his status. He is now married and working as a social worker in Victoria.
Her shocking evidence and bravery in speaking out drew gasps from the packed public gallery in Sydney and she left the witness box to loud applause. The royal commission is focusing on the Catholic Church’s controversial Towards Healing process meant to help abuse victims like Mrs Isaacs. “There’s a time in your life when you have to stand up for what is right and that time for me is now,” Ms Isaacs, 60, said. “When the royal commission started this was one of the reasons that I needed to stand up because I needed to be free of those chains before I died.” She said she had felt silenced for the past 12 years since reluctantly signing a confidentiality agreement through the church’s controversial Towards Healing process for a $30,000 settlement which after she paid legal fees, left her with enough to buy $5000 worth of Coles-Myer shares and a sewing machine. The commission is focusing on how the Towards Healing process worked as well as its links with the church’s own insurance company, Catholic Church Insurance. Mrs Isaacs said she was 14 and 15 when she was abused by Derriman who was a priest of the Archdiocese of Brisbane and chaplain of Brisbane’s Sacred Heart Sandgate in 1967 and 1968. She said he formed this new Brown family to weaken her ties with her own family and “softened” her up for sex by making her read the novel Lolita and talking about sex during confessional. He referred to nuns “in a sexual manner” and celebrated the date June 25 which is the birth date of the baby who is the anti-Christ in the book Rosemary’s Baby, she said. In 1968, her mother accompanied her to talk to their parish priest, Father Doyle, and they showed him a letter that Derriman had written to her but she claimed Father Doyle told her to “look for someone my own age”.’ But it was 30 years before she went to the police after she became a teacher in the Archdiocese of Brisbane and found that another priest, Father Ron McKeirnan, was deputy director of Catholic education and she knew he had sexually abused a number of children while a resident at Sacred Heart Presbytery. McKeirnan was later jailed in 1998 for molesting nine boys in the 1960s and ‘70s. In 1998, Derriman was convicted of indecently assaulting Mrs Isaacs and sentenced to one year behind bars, to be suspended after he served four months. In 1996 she had also seen Derriman on a beach with a young woman and a child and she had “terrible thoughts of ... the future of the child he was with.” Mrs Isaacs said when she went through the Towards Healing process, she expected to be treated with warmth, dignity and respect but later discovered that everything that was said to her during the process, including the apology, had been drafted beforehand by a church lawyer beforehand. The royal commission has negotiated with the church to lift all the secrecy agreements signed by victims. Then on December 5, Mrs Isaacs received a letter from the Archbishop of Brisbane, Rev Mark Coleridge, stating that he believed there should have never been any secrecy clauses and he freed her from her agreement. Counsel assisting the royal commission, Gail Furness SC, asked her what she wanted to say to that. Mrs Isaacs said: “Too little, too late. “I was waiting and waiting and I heard the opening address from the (Catholic) Church this morning about how sorry they were for everything that happened and I went back to my letter and I couldn’t find sorry anywhere. “I was silenced for 12 years. It has been so difficult to live like that.”
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