AUCKLAND (NEW ZEALAND)
WAATEA News
June 9, 2020
An Auckland man who was abused as a child by his parish priest is urging anyone with similar stories to tell them to the Royal Commission on Abuse in State Care and Religious Institutions.
Mike Ledingham says the late Father Frank Green set up gymnastics and other activities in his Onehunga parish in the late 1950s to get close to children he then abused.
The former soldier says he kept quiet about his experience because of the social conditions at the time, but it affected his schooling and subsequent approach to life and he later discovered two of his brothers were also abused by Green, along with at least 30 other children.
Mr Ledingham says it’s important to find if New Zealand had the same level of paedophilia in the Catholic church as was uncovered by the Australian Royal Commission.
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