NEW SOUTH WALES (AUSTRALIA)
Newcastle Herald
March 11, 2019
By Joanne McCarthy
A CATHOLIC Church child sexual abuse survivor who prayed for death to relieve extreme pain after pelvic mesh surgery has accused key elements of Australia’s health system of acting like the church over the mesh scandal.
“I went to the Catholic Church and there was minimising, inaction and denial. I complained after mesh surgery and the response was the same from the health system. It was just denying, denying, denying there was a problem with mesh for years,” said Joan Isaacs, who was one of the first Catholic survivors to give evidence to the child abuse royal commission in 2013.
“In the past we’ve trusted doctors, just like the church. We put doctors up on a pedestal, just like priests and bishops, and both groups have minimised and denied when vulnerable people have been hurt. There’s not much difference.”
She told the royal commission the church’s Towards Healing process for abuse survivors was “re-abuse”, and wept this week as she talked about similar feelings while dealing with the health system, including the Therapeutic Goods Administration which approved mesh devices for use in Australia.
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