Holy Hell

by Patricia Feenan

  Daniel eventually rang in the afternoon and said he was bruised and cut but okay. I asked him to come home and sort his problems out and he said he would get help.

  School holidays were on and so on the following Friday I fled to my sister’s farm at Warialda, which is in the north west of New South Wales, with my youngest son. We were all upset. John rang on the Sunday to tell me that Daniel now had a DUI (driving under the influence) charge and had spent the night in the lock-up in Brisbane. When released, he drove home to find the police waiting at his flat and they arrested him again. When the police let him go, he found a doctor who directed him to the Royal Brisbane Hospital’s psychiatric ward. Daniel had walked for an hour to get there and admitted himself. He was in a poor state, mentally and emotionally.

  My sister and I drove to Brisbane the next day. It was a really long drive through south-western Queensland and we had plenty of time to talk. John had flown up but he left before we arrived on the Monday evening. Daniel was pleased to see us but he was very upset. He told us he was seeing a psychiatrist, and he was very upset that he couldn’t manage his life. No great revelation there. He told me he had mentioned the abuse to the doctors and he felt a load had been lifted off his shoulders.

  My sister Christine and I stayed with a cousin of John’s and the family was welcoming, loving and very supportive. We visited Daniel each day, I bought him some new clothes and then when he seemed relatively settled, we decided to leave to drive back to the farm. I felt I was deserting him but his doctor said he would be there for a while and I knew he was safe enough. He was having alcohol and drug counselling and some help to look into his unmanageable life.

  When Daniel was released from hospital, he only lasted one night and then rang me and asked if he could come home and live with me. I suggested he wait until his court appearance for the drink driving charge and he said he couldn’t. John flew up and drove him and his little ute home and they arrived the day before Mothers’ Day, 2001. When he went to bed that night, he called me into his room, thanked me and said that he felt safe at last. Ever the optimist, I believed that things would work out for him and he would settle and manage his life better.

  Daniel and I flew to Queensland at the end of May, courtesy of John’s frequent flyer points. He was very anxious about his court appearance and when he was fined and his licence was revoked, he believed it was fair treatment. He thanked me for not turning my back on him and said he would talk about the abuse when he was ready. He also said we wouldn’t understand and so I asked him to trust us and that we would never desert him. He said he did trust us but thought he had dealt with the abuse himself. I knew he was still struggling but could only let him know that I loved him and would be there when he needed me.

  Daniel slept all the way home in the plane and I watched him for most of that time. Not for the first time I wondered where our strong and confident young man had gone and how was I ever to help this frightened and insecure Daniel who needed so much support.

  Where was the Year 10 school captain, All Round Academic Achiever, elite cricketer, ‘chick magnet’ (according to his brothers), and generally happy and strong son?

  11

  Daniel found work and settled down reasonably well. He started a new relationship and seemed happy enough but it wasn’t long before the old demons started to torment him again. The old patterns resurfaced and there was another broken relationship and poor self-esteem issues underneath his reasonably confident outward appearance.

  Late in 2001, he applied for a good job in Newcastle and succeeded in getting it. He still talked in general terms about the abuse and said that no one should have to have put up with what he had and of course we agreed notwithstanding the fact that we really didn’t know any details. More drinking but good progress at work followed and we all started to hope that he was on the improve. A new relationship with a lovely lady named Donna with two small children began and he settled down really well. Fingers crossed. When I first met Donna, she asked me if I minded Daniel being with someone who already had two children. I remember saying to her that if she was the person who could make Daniel happy and settle down, then I would be very grateful and the children were a bonus. She looked me straight in the eye and said, “You’re looking at her!”

  She was a sweet and bubbly person who obviously wanted the best life possible for her children and I was impressed with her determination to make that happen. She told me that Daniel had told her of his problems and she believed that together they could overcome them. I breathed a sigh of relief, yet again, and tried to relax. Of course not any of us, including Donna, had any notion of the stress that was waiting to engulf us and test us to the very limits of our endurance and resilience. An unexpected pregnancy developed and Daniel was over the moon with happiness.

  I was visiting a sick aunt with my mother when Daniel rang. He told me his new partner’s mother was in the same hospital and so I decided to seek her out and meet her as were going to be the grandmothers of the coming baby. I met Donna’s parents and they told me what a fine fellow Daniel was but they did think he drank a bit much at times. Donna had apparently been going to ring Bernard, who was eighteen, to get Daniel one night in recent times. My feelings were of disappointment and anger and they began to accelerate.

  In the evening after meeting Donna’s parents, I had been invited to the home of friends for dinner. I remember being distracted through the evening, so much so that my friend said she thought I was ill. I was thinking of Daniel all through that night and remembering how many times we had picked him up and guided him forward.

  Later at home, I tossed and turned as I realised that the new relationship, although seemingly happy, was suffering the same problems as earlier ones. I was so disappointed that the drinking was still an issue. However, I had been around alcohol-related problems for a long time and understood very well that drinking was so often a way of coping with deep-seated distresses in a person’s life.

  I eventually fell asleep and when I woke on the Sunday morning, I had a new resolve. Daniel would have to stand alone with his alcohol-related behaviour and Bernard would not be rescuing him and bringing him home to sober up. I phoned Donna’s home and asked if I could go and talk to them both. When I arrived and stated my mission very clearly to Daniel, he was very defensive. We talked about the new baby coming, Daniel’s own child, and the importance of stability for Donna’s two children.

  Daniel became upset. He told me that he would be going along all right with his new resolve and then memories and anger would derail him and he would find himself back on the merry-go-round of destructive behaviours that were impeding his life. I remember grabbing hold of him and physically shaking him, saying it just had to be over as we were all sick to death of the long miserable journey of watching our beloved son self destruct.

  I asked Daniel what it would take to wipe the slate clean and he said he had thought he might talk to the police. An overwhelming feeling of relief swept over me, as I knew I had exhausted every available option and I hoped there would be a great weight lifted from our shoulders if someone else could help our son. He said he was ready to talk. I phoned John, his father, and asked if he would come up to where we were as Daniel was thinking of going to the police about the abuse. He came immediately. Daniel explained to him that he thought the abuse was having a bad effect on his life and of course we were all in agreement with that.

  So there we were, sitting around a table, having a coffee and thinking of the past and that one incident at Branxton Presbytery about seven years before. We believed Dan when he had previously disclosed the abuse but we were puzzled about the motivation of the priest. There was so much that we still didn’t know.

  Soon after the original disclosure about that night, in 2000, John had asked Bishop Michael Malone whether there had been any “previous form” with Fletcher, meaning of course if there had been any suggestion of inappropriateness with young males. He looked up his file and told John there was not
hing in it that would indicate any such thing. He was the bishop so of course John believed him. Years later, we discovered that the bishop had had a meeting in February 1997 with a school principal about possible issues with Fletcher and young boys. As time went by, we learned that this sort of cover-up wasn’t unusual.

  We were all a bit emotional as we talked and John said to Daniel that he supported and loved him but he couldn’t understand why the priest would abuse him suddenly when he was nineteen years old. My beloved son looked at me, tears welling in his eyes and said that it was because it had started when he was twelve years old.

  Silence, at first. Then noise, the deafening noise in my head. I was screaming in silence as I recognised the truth, the horrible, unpalatable truth. Images of Daniel and his brothers laughing with the priest, John and I talking with the priest and then memories of Daniel’s distress flashed and collided with one another in my head. I wept. We all wept.

  Daniel’s father and I both spoke at the same moment with the same thought. When? We knew that, to our knowledge, the priest had had no opportunity to seek Daniel’s company without our being aware of it. I had no understanding of a paedophile’s scheming or execution of his craft. I now know that as a paedophile, this man was the ‘complete unit’ – the technical name for a ‘full-blown’ paedophile.

  He groomed his victims, manoeuvred, offended and covered his tracks with precision and arrogance. He of course created opportunities away from us in Maitland where Daniel attended secondary school. And there were those chances when he drove Daniel between our parish churches as an extra altar server. For Christ sake, he was in between celebrating Masses! I had a horrible premonition that some of those earlier puzzling instances involving Daniel would now be explained. I had no idea what pain we were all about to go through as Daniel revealed his journey of abuse and survival. Daniel’s pain would be ongoing and there would be a new journey that he and his family would now be making together.

  I rang a very old and trusted friend in the legal profession whom I knew would help Daniel start the journey. He was very kind and concerned and told Dan that he would set up a meeting with a policeman whom he respected and who would treat Daniel with respect as well. He told Daniel he would ring him the next day with a time and place. I have no idea what the others did, but I spent the afternoon looking at old photos, crying and asking, ‘Why?’

  That night, I happened to be watching television and there was an interview between Richard Carlton and Cardinal George Pell on Sixty Minutes about clergy sexual abuse in the Catholic Church and the way in which the victims were treated. There were parents being interviewed and they talked about the way the abuse affected their children. I had a hope that Daniel wouldn’t be watching as he had been very upset earlier in the day. No. He was watching and for the first time he saw himself as a victim because he could identify with the sort of behaviour and life difficulties that other victims had experienced.

  He told me some time after, that up until that point, he just felt he kept stuffing up because of bad decisions. He couldn’t understand that his mates drank and socialised and lived rather normal lives but when he did that, there were often very serious consequences. He hadn’t factored in post-traumatic stress, anger and confusion. That night he recognised a pattern of behaviour that he was very familiar with. The paedophile priest, Father Fletcher, had done a comprehensive job in warping Daniel’s mind into believing that the relationship he had had with him was somehow Dan’s fault. The load of guilt that my boy had carried was heavy and unfounded.

  It was all too much and Daniel exploded by telephoning Father Fletcher. Father Fletcher, the parish priest, the family friend, the paedophile. On hearing Fletcher’s voice, Daniel let loose and held nothing back in telling this man, this pitiful excuse for a priest, what he thought of him. It probably wasn’t the thing to do on the eve of going to the police. The outburst left Daniel upset and angry, but he said that it had made him feel better and for the very first time in his long association with the priest, the power was about to turn. Interestingly, Fletcher didn’t realise it was Daniel on the phone so one might wonder who else he thought it might be.

  Strangely, he didn’t ring the police after such an abusive phone call but called up one of his fellow priests to go and stay with him.

  12

  On 3rd June 2002, Daniel and Donna had their first meeting with Detective Sergeant Peter Fox who became our trusted friend and rock over the ensuing few years.

  I remember praying, still did it, for Daniel that this meeting with the police would help him start on a path to recovery. We were very careful not to badger him with questions although there were a million we longed to ask. The main one of course was why he hadn’t told us, followed closely by when and where it had happened. The whole upset was exacerbated by the fact that John and I had separated and perhaps one of the underlying causes was because we had run out of emotional fortitude as we had watched our eldest son living a self-destructive lifestyle. Here we were again, having long conversations about him but this time with a clear insight as to what the problem was.

  My circle of trusted people, who had known about Daniel’s original allegation of abuse suffered at Branxton Presbytery, were stunned at the latest allegations but completely convinced of the truth of Daniel’s story as they reflected on his past traumas and difficulties with life. I had cried on shoulders many times in the past and they had not forgotten.

  My two sisters and their families are very special women who have shouldered our burden and walked the journey with us, sometimes carrying me when the load became too heavy and never refusing a conversation or plea for help to make sense of the latest evil. All this support was given unconditionally through times in their busy lives as they worked full time and managed their own family commitments. My other relatives and friends know exactly who they are and I hope they are aware of the wonderful support and contribution they have given to me. My respect for their privacy is the reason they won’t be named in this story but I can assure each one that they will be in my grateful heart forever as I reflect on the company, meals and encouragement they have all shared with me. In my many lonely times, they were only a phone call away and time with them, while not minimising the terrible situation I had found myself in, helped considerably in reminding me that there was a normal, beautiful world embracing me.

  After Daniel’s first visit to the police, we held our breath. We had no idea what was ahead nor of the time it would take to walk that particular path. I remember his first visit was on a Monday, and I kept really busy for the next few days so I would not be consumed with the worry of what might happen. At about 6 o’clock on the Wednesday night, the phone rang and I was very surprised to learn that the caller was Bishop Michael Malone.

  Bishop Michael asked me how I was and I told him that I’d been better. He said that he could understand my feelings as John had told him about Daniel’s allegations against Father Jim Fletcher. I was stunned that John had told him and immediately felt very uneasy. The whole matter was in the hands of the police and I was perplexed and angry that John had mentioned it to the bishop. Of course he worked closely with the bishop and I guess he just wanted him to know. He wouldn’t have had any idea of the repercussions of such a disclosure and the importance of the bishop’s subsequent actions on the whole investigation. Bishop Michael said that firstly he wanted to convey his sympathy for the pain that I was no doubt experiencing and that he was offering help for whatever I needed through the difficult and perhaps long time ahead.

  He said that John had told him the day before (Tuesday 4th June) about Daniel’s visit to the police and that he had been up to see Father Jim that very afternoon (5th June). I held my breath and felt my chest pounding and then asked him what Father Jim had said. The bishop said that of course he denied he had anything to answer for and was understandably very upset. I said to the bishop that of course he would deny any allegations, to which Michael Malone replied, “For what I know of pae
dophiles, they lie through their teeth when confronted.” He said it was very important to believe Daniel and that it was my and John’s roles as parents to do so.

  The breach of trust that we had experienced from Fletcher as a religious person probably fuelled my disappointment and anger at the bishop and I asked him why he had gone anywhere near Fletcher. He said it was to offer pastoral support to a brother priest. I told him indignantly that if Fletcher didn’t know he was being investigated then he didn’t need any support. At that stage I saw the visit as a ‘tip-off’ and resolved there and then to inform the police of the bishop’s visit to Fletcher.

  The bishop told me that he had “put Jim in touch with Fathers Burston, Harrigan and Saunders to support him through this time.” He then said that from that point on, he would be “stepping back and waiting” adding that “people were innocent until proven guilty.”

  He then offered any support the church could provide in the way of counselling and said he would be back in touch. I told him that I would need help as John and I had exhausted each other worrying about Daniel and it was difficult now we were separated. I told him of the pain of seeing a son struggle with some aspects of his life and how proud I was of him for being courageous enough to put up his hand. He said he would ring me in a day or so and help me with whatever I had decided regarding counselling.

  I decided not to tell Daniel that the bishop had been up to see Fletcher as I knew he would be upset. He was coping with enough pain from the Church as he unravelled the tightly-bound secret he had protected for years. I also assumed rightly or wrongly that he would be very disappointed and feel betrayed by the knowledge that his father had spoken to the bishop. John’s motives weren’t sinister and we all, at that stage, were still trying to trust the Catholic Church.