AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald
July 24, 2013
Catherine Armitage
Senior Writer
He has moved on with his life but even nine years after the court case, the man who endured years of “dreadful” abuse as a boy by a Catholic priest in the Hunter Valley could not keep the incredulity from his voice.
On that day in 2004 when Father James Fletcher was found guilty of all charges of sexually abusing him, Fletcher’s bishop, Michael Malone – “his” bishop, his father’s boss – rang his home and asked his father to put him on the phone.
“I still remember, he told me that Fletcher would never work in the diocese again and he asked me to keep my faith. To this day I wonder what faith he was talking about,” the man known as AH told the silent courtroom at the NSW government inquiry into alleged church and police cover-ups of child sexual abuse by priests in the Maitland-Newcastle diocese.
AH told of how he was “an innocent little kid with a big hope for the future” when Fletcher stole the promise from his life. He remembered other things in gut-wrenching detail. The priest’s number plate – JPF004 – ”will always be in my head”. He remembered how during the trial, clergy visited and supported Fletcher but none went near him and his family, they “didn’t want to look at us”. It was a feeling of two sides, he said, “completely opposite”.
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