Church Ignored Priest's 'Sex Cult'

By Dan Box
The Australian
December 10, 2013

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/in-depth/church-ignored-priests-sex-cult/story-fngburq5-1226779258993#



A CATHOLIC priest created a "cult-like group" of teenage girls, fathering a child with one while telling another girl he was terminally ill and she "needed to have sex with him before he died".

One of the victims, Joan Isaacs, yesterday told the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse that her attempts to warn the church about the actions of Frank Derriman were ignored and the priest was able to abuse again.

Ms Isaacs, who received several standing ovations while giving evidence at the Sydney hearing, is one of more than 2200 alleged child abuse victims to have contacted the Catholic Church.

The church has paid out more than $43 million in compensation nationwide, the commission heard, but many of the victims felt they had been mistreated during the church's "Towards Healing" process for dealing with their claims.

Over two years during the 1960s, Ms Isaacs was part of a "cult-like group which included myself and three other children" that Derriman named after the Peanuts comic-strip and whom he regularly abused.

The Brisbane-based priest left letters for Ms Isaacs, who was aged about 14 at the time, inside her school desk and "on a number of occasions he told me that I needed to have sex with him before he died".

"(He told me) if I loved god it would be OK to have sex with him because he was god's representative," she told the commission.

Ms Isaacs, a retired schoolteacher, made a complaint under the Towards Healing process in 1999, shortly after Derriman was convicted of abusing her and sentenced to jail.

After years of negotiation dominated by the church's insurance company, she was asked to sign a deed of release including a clause "that I was not to discuss the aspect of my abuse with anyone, including my husband and children".

"I feel that the deed has silenced me in this respect and it continues to haunt me to this day.

"The silencing holds the same power and control over me that was used by Father Derriman when he abused me as a child."

Ms Isaacs ultimately received a financial settlement that, after her legal costs, allowed her to buy "$5000 worth of Coles-Myer shares and a sewing machine", the commission heard.

Derriman, who remained a priest until at least 2011, retired from active ministry in 1970 and moved to Ballarat, where he became a social worker and university teacher. He is still alive.

More than 2200 people have made complaints of abuse to the Catholic Church since Towards Healing was established in 1996, the commission heard, three-quarters of which relate to child sex abuse allegedly committed between 1950 and 1980.

The full number of victims was likely to be higher, the commission heard, as the Archdiocese of Melbourne operated a separate scheme, while the church's own Towards Healing records were inconsistent and incomplete.

The church's barrister, Peter Gray SC, said the hearing represented "a searing and decisive moment in the history of the Catholic Church".

"The church is deeply sorry. It apologises to all those who have been harmed and betrayed. It humbly asks for forgiveness."

His statement was interrupted when several of those listening angrily walked out of the hearing room and began openly weeping outside.