Over time, I have had a professional need to use something called Hansard. Hansard, according to its website (http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Hansard) is "the name given to the edited transcripts of debates in the Australian Senate, House of Representatives, Federation Chamber and parliamentary committees. They are published shortly after the chamber or committee proceedings have concluded". Hansard is pretty much a record of everything said in the Australian Parliament and, considering the state of Australian politics, it's no surprise to know Hansard is not a place to find inspiration for personal change. Funnily enough, I did.
Recently, while using Hansard, I read of an Education References Committee that was looking into the state of education for young Indigenous Australians. The witnesses were educators from Bourke in far north-west NSW. I've been to Bourke a couple of times when I stayed with the families of friends from boarding school during school holidays so I had some context about the place.Anyway, as I began to read through the witness list, the name ELMORE, Father James Godfrey, School Chaplain, St Ignatius Primary School jumps out at me from the page. Why? Well, he, with the help of my Religious Education teacher Ray Logan, indecently assaulted me just after my 14th birthday.
You may be wondering how this discovery equates to finding inspiration for personal change but, for me, what happened next is what's important. You see, I reported this abuse to the police in 2001. They took my statement and attempted to interview Elmore. Unfortunately, a highly organised wall of legal defence was set up around Elmore and he was simply allowed to respond with a "no comment" to the detective's questions. Because I had no corroborating information, the police dropped the case. A few weeks later, someone claiming to be from Towards Healing contacted me saying the Catholic Church wanted to make a pastoral gesture to me for my troubles. After a protracted period of "negotiation" with Towards Healing, I accepted some shut up money and their promise that Elmore would be taken out of circulation. The whole process was an absolute joke but, I was in a terrible state and totally vulnerable to the overall strategy to protect Elmore and, therefore the Catholic Church, from exposure. I often wonder why the Catholic Church works so hard to protect the "bad eggs" in their clergy ranks but the reason why dawned on me last night. The Catholic Church only cares about protecting Elmore because Elmore, an arch-pedophile, probably knows enough about what's going on pedophile-wise to bring important people down if he is cut loose.
My conviction on this comes from something that preceded me making a statement to the police about the abuse. I can't really remember how this happened, but it might have something to do with an early face book thing like "Find High School Friends" or something but, through that, I was contacted by a former teacher of mine, Tony Young. I had fond memories of Mr Young because, well to start with he didn't seem like a pedophile and secondly, he was pretty cool. Anyway, Mr Young contacts me and tells me that he is now principal at the school I was abused at (Christian Brothers College, Burwood) and is bringing a school excursion to Canberra. We arranged to meet and after a seemingly pleasant visit our conversation turned to how I was going. I told Mr Young that I was not too good because things that happened at school were troubling me badly now. I told him it had something to do with Elmore and that I was thinking about making a statement to the police. Mr Young told me it would be hard to do that because Elmore was dead. I was actually disappointed to hear that but something was wrong about it. My spidey-sense was going off. I needed to confirm that Elmore really was dead. So, I attempted to track him down and I discovered that he had changed from being a Christian Brother - Brother Elmore - to a priest in the Pashionist Order and that he was indeed alive. At that point, I think I just thought Tony Young had made a mistake or thought I was talking about someone else. Because the thought of Elmore disgusts me, I deliberately remained anonymous in my search to figure out whether he was dead. I also never left any contact numbers and rang from a work phone which comes up as a private number. So, you can imagine my surprise when, not long after figuring out he was NOT dead, Elmore starts calling and leaving messages on my work phone. I mean, I didn't really know the guy apart from his grooming tactics and the abuse and all of a sudden I'm getting messages from him like we are friends or something. He rang so many times my boss had to take one of his calls to lie and tell him I was on extended leave and to stop calling. It was the "lie" about Elmore's death and the phone calls that finally drove me to go to the police.
Anyway, you still may be wondering where the Hansard inspiration is. Well, I couldn't help myself after seeing his name in Hansard so I did another kind of internet tracking of Elmore and Logan. I found that Elmore is still in circulation with schools and Logan is dead but had been found guilty on multiple child abuse charges. Some of Logan's charges pre-date his engagement as a lay teacher at Christian Brothers Burwood. In fact, he was defrocked from the Marist Brothers because of his crimes before I was born. So, I decided to contact the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse and tell them my story. I am hoping they will then ask the Catholic Church two questions:
1. Did they know Logan was a pedophile when they employed him as a future teacher of me at Christian Brothers Burwood? and
2. Did they act to protect children in response to my allegations - which they took seriously enough to make me sign a gag order as a condition of receiving their "shut up money" - by taking Elmore out of circulation in the Catholic Education System?
I know the answers. Yes and no. I just want to see it in writing.
Go me!
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