AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald
November 25, 2015
Beau Donelly
A young girl who was sexually abused by a paedophile priest, after already suffering abuse at the hands of a family member, was later asked by police if she was “wearing a neon sign above your head saying ‘come and get me’,” the royal commission has heard.
Julie Stewart told the child abuse royal commission that she was nine years old when Doveton parish priest Peter Searson forced her to sit on his lap during confession and indecently assaulted her.
“He would say to me: ‘Do you love father?’ And I said ‘yes’. He would ask me to kiss him on the lips. I did,” she told the hearing on Wednesday.
Ms Stewart, now 40, said the abuse continued throughout 1984 and 1985 and that she started wearing tracksuit pants or stockings into the confessional to make it harder for the priest to abuse her.
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