AUSTRALIA
The Armidale Express
JANENE CAREY
06 Jul, 2012
AMID calls for a Royal Commission into Catholic Church cover-ups of child sexual abuse cases, Armidale resident Peter Jurd, who featured in Monday night’s Four Corner’s expose, spoke to The Express about how the program has sparked hopes of finally seeing justice for his brother Damian and other victims.
Mr Jurd, a mature-aged student who moved to Armidale four years ago to study law at the University of New England, said he only found out for sure that he was living in the same town as his brother’s alleged abuser, Father F, when his family was contacted by the Four Corners investigation team.
“We had heard he might be here but we didn’t know,” Mr Jurd said. “It’s only in the last couple of months that I’ve been made aware he was definitely here in Armidale. But because Four Corners was investigating him, I didn’t want to interfere in that. It was hard at times – it would have been nice to go and confront him.”
Father F, who cannot be named for legal reasons, is a defrocked Catholic priest originally from the Armidale Diocese accused of sexually molesting a string of altar boys in Moree and Sydney during the 1980s, including 11-year-old Damian Jurd.
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