AUSTRALIA
The Daily Telegraph
Ian Paterson, The Daily Telegraph
A HEARTLESS archbishop has refused to apologise to a 92-year-old mother for the sexual abuse a priest inflicted on her then teenage daughter, who later committed suicide.
The Archbishop of Melbourne Denis Hart yesterday fronted the royal commission into child sex abuse to issue a series of apologies for the Catholic Church’s handling of a “tsunami” of cases but refused to even acknowledge that Eileen Piper’s daughter Stephanie had been sexually assaulted over several years by a disgraced former priest.
Ms Piper took her own life in Melbourne in 1994 after allegedly suffering sexual abuse between the ages of 15 and 18 when in a youth group run by Father Gerard Mulvale.
After 23 years, her mother is still battling with the Melbourne archdiocese, which refuses to acknowledge the abuse of her daughter.
Mulvale, the priest who allegedly raped Stephanie during her late teens, was sentenced to three years jail in 1995 for indecently assaulting two teenage boys who were in the same youth group.
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