AUSTRALIA
The Cairns Post
June 7, 2016
Kimberley Vlasic
The Cairns Post
ALMOST 10 years ago to the day, Joanne McCarthy received the phone call that would irrevocably change her life and the lives of thousands of others.
It was the call that started to untangle the web of lies spun by the Catholic Church to conceal the ghastliest of secrets.
It was the call that later led to two police strike forces, resulting in the arrests of at least 12 religious brothers and priests on nearly 500 criminal charges.
It was the call that set into motion a series of government inquiries into child sexual abuse, including a Federal Royal Commission, which is ongoing.
Joanne clearly remembers that phone call in early June 2006.
“It was a man who rang me because he knew my name from writing stuff in the paper but also stuff in the paper about my sons. He rang out of the blue and he wanted to know why no media outlet had ever reported the fact that five years earlier, a Catholic priest from the Hunter region west of Newcastle called John Denham had been convicted of child sex offences,” she says.
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