NEWCASTLE (AUSTRALIA)
The Newcastle Herald
December 8, 2017
By Joanne McCarthy
JOHN Cleary is the former banker who looked back fondly on his banking years while drowning in Newcastle Anglican Church’s dark child sex history for more than a decade.
“There were days when I thought, ‘Oh gee I miss the banks’,” said the former Newcastle Anglican diocese registrar who became a whistleblower before severing ties with the church in February.
“People bag the banks for doing the wrong thing but look what the Royal Commission’s shown us about what happened in churches. Is there a lot of difference?” he said as the long-awaited final report into the Hunter Anglican history was released.
Mr Cleary settled a legal case against the diocese after alleging he had been “marginalised, bullied and ostracised” by senior church officials for his stand on behalf of victims of abuse and attempts at reform.
Although it is nearly one year since he left the diocese to work at a Hunter aged care facility, Mr Cleary said the “horrific and graphic abuse of children” he discovered, exacerbated by the diocese’s “cover-up culture”, caused real damage.
“I don’t know if I can every truly switch off from it,” Mr Cleary said.
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