Abuse Victim Claims Priest Cried

Sky News
December 12, 2013

http://www.skynews.com.au/national/article.aspx?id=933602


Jennifer Ingham says she first understood the abuse inflicted on her was not her fault the moment her family priest cried and told her she was not the only victim of a Catholic Church sex predator.

But as far as Father Frank Mulcahy is concerned, that meeting 23 years ago never happened.

He has denied attending any meeting with senior church figures, Mrs Ingham and her then-husband in early 1990, at which she allegedly disclosed abuse she had suffered as a teenager and young woman at the hands of Father Paul Rex Brown.

And although Fr Mulcahy knew her father from their boarding school days and gave him communion on his deathbed in Lismore, the retired clergyman says he didn't know who Mrs Ingham was.

Both gave evidence to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in Sydney on Thursday.

Mrs Ingham, 51, wiped away tears as she told the inquiry that when Fr Mulcahy told her of two other girls who were abused by Fr Brown, she realised she wasn't to blame.

'I thought, Oh my God, it wasn't just me. It's not my fault',' she said.

But Fr Mulcahy said the meeting never happened and he was not aware that anyone else had raised abuse allegations against Fr Brown, who died in 2005.

Fr Mulcahy rejected Mrs Ingham's account of him crying.

'Are you a man capable of tears when upset?' commission chair Justice Peter McClellan asked.

'No,' Fr Mulcahy replied.

'I can't recall having tears in my eyes since I was a child, even when my father died.'

Fr Brown continued to sexually abuse Mrs Ingham after she finished school, the commission heard.

He secured a waitressing job for her in Sydney, arranged to meet her regularly at a motel in Glebe and paid for her to fly to his parish home at Tweed Heads.

She suffered ongoing psychiatric problems and a long battle with bulimia, which prevented her from sitting her final school exams and did such damage to her mouth and face that she remains in severe pain.

Her abuser remained a figure in her life, even marrying her to her first husband Colin Riches, who has testified he was present at the disputed 1990 meeting.

'When Jenny told the priests about her abuse by Brown, Fr Mulcahy was very upset,' Mr Riches said in a statement.

'He said he knew about this abuse but he said, as she had been unwell, he did not want to approach her.'

Mrs Ingham's lawyer Richard Royle argued Fr Mulcahy had deliberately put the meeting out of his mind because it was an inconvenient thing to remember.

'That's insulting,' Fr Mulcahy replied.

Mrs Ingham received financial compensation this year, after confronting the church through its internal process Towards Healing.

But she agreed her treatment at times made her feel that 'it was either their way or the highway'.

She lashed out at the church for shuffling predator priests from town to town to cover up their crimes.

'Why couldn't just one good fearless person have stepped out against the depravities and the wrongs that existed?' she said.

'I just hope we never get back to that again.'

The hearing resumes on Friday.