‘This scourge must end once and for all’, says priest’s victim

Peter Gogarty, a survivor of sexual abuse, wants lasting, long-term change so what happened to him is not repeated.

Child abuse victim Peter Gogarty, right, and his wife, Donna, at home in Vacy, NSW. Picture: Julian Andrews

Peter Gogarty is anxious. A survivor of sexual abuse, he has been heartened as successive members of the clergy have been exposed and sent to jail for abusing children in their care, but now he wants lasting reform.

“I just need to know that what happens next fixes the problem for good,” he told The Australian.

“The last thing we need is an experience when people share these horrendous stories and then everyone says they’ve learned their lesson, they’ve done a bad thing and just move on. That just won’t work for me.”

The Newcastle-based advocate for survivors of sexual abuse spoke to The Australian yesterday as a royal commission hearing in Newcastle heard that 7 per cent of all Catholic priests and brothers in Australia over the past six decades were involved in abusing children.

The statistic did not come as a surprise to him, nor the fact that in some Catholic orders the number of brothers suspected of abusing children topped 40 per cent. In fact, Mr Gogarty expects more galling statistics to come out of the commission as investigators reveal the extent to which Catholic authorities addressed allegations of abuse by simply transporting offenders from one parish to another.

Four decades on from his ­experience, he is now lobbying for a watchdog to ensure that churches, schools and other institutions working with children follow strict protocols dealing with offenders when allegations of abuse arise.

“What’s become apparent is that it wasn’t only the perpetrators doing these things to kids, but the other failing was these ­institutions covering it up and ­allowing it to continue.

“The people in authority ... moved (the abusers) on and so the abuse continued.”

Mr Gogarty was 10 and living with his family near Maitland, north of Newcastle in regional NSW, when he first met young parish priest James Patrick Fletcher, who started abusing him at 12. The abuse continued until Mr Gogarty was 18 and threatened to kill Fletcher if he laid another hand on him. Throughout the entire ordeal, he never considered telling anyone.

“In communities like this at the time, trust in the church was absolute,” he said. Fletcher was brought to justice in 2002 when another victim who had been raped as an altar boy spoke out against the priest. Fletcher was sentenced to almost eight years’ prison, where he died in 2006.