“Well Daniel that was really awful but now do you want an egg and lettuce sandwich or meat and tomato?”
There was a collective sigh of relief and then instant chatter. Daniel said to Paula that he would love the egg but first he was going outside for a smoke. At that moment, the whole room full of family and friends were uniformly very glad that Daniel was a smoker. One health conscious aunty said
“Daniel why don’t you have two!”
We were very mindful of the warning that we, as witnesses, had been given from Detective Fox. We were not to discuss Daniel’s evidence with him or one another. People milled around and told us Daniel was courageous and we all chatted in a strangely relaxed way over lunch. That is not the only time that Paula’s sense of humour and quick grasp of a situation, relieved the tension in those few weeks.
The trial resumed. Inside a room next to ours, another family waited also. Some of their family sat in the court room and some stayed with the other alleged victim of the priest who would be giving evidence some time in the next few days. I wondered who they were. We shared a kettle with them and Detective Fox or the DPP officer went between the two rooms as we were to have no contact with them. At one stage, we heard them talking excitedly and there was laughing and exclamations. We were told by a policeman that a daughter had arrived unexpectedly from overseas and they were all joyous. I knew exactly how that mother was feeling. We did offer some of our food to them, via Detective Fox, and they in turn had someone called Aunty Shirley who cooked for them and also brought in cakes and a sample of her Christmas pudding for us. I was starting to get an inkling that this other family did things just like ours.
The media started to make eye contact with us. Previously it had been heads down and talking to one another as they filed past. The cameras were outside as well and we tried to ignore them and we knew that they could snap off whatever they liked but they would be in contempt of court if they tried to publish any identifying photos.
Another break was called and this time our people were angry. They had watched and listened as the Defence’s fancy and very expensive QC had tried to discredit Daniel’s evidence. People were incensed as he tried to trip Daniel up on his evidence. Barrister Ian Barker QC put it to Daniel that he let Father Fletcher have sex with him again and again without opposition. Daniel replied that Fletcher had made threats and that’s why he did not say anything. Barker tried to get Daniel to admit that he had made the story up so he could get money and Daniel said he had not.
“Do you think I would put my whole family through this?” he responded.
Peter Fox had warned they would probably take this tack. That is the best explanation defence can come up with when a priest is alleged to have committed sexual assault.
There was further confusion as photos of a site near Paterson were looked at. Daniel kept his cool as a pile of photos were passed to him to identify.
I have not spoken much about the specific acts my son endured. They were just as upsetting then as they remain to this day. Daniel had never been able to talk to me about the specifics of what happened. He had said that it was just too painful. Instead he asked me to read the statement he had made over many painful hours to Detective Peter Fox. I remember reading the statement and breaking down time and again as well as being physically sick. It was a few years before I could read it completely. I felt compelled to share my son’s pain as I didn’t share it at the time of the abuse because I wasn’t aware of it.
I have wrestled as to whether to include any detail of any of the acts of abuse. It still brings so much hurt but I don’t believe I can convey the full gravity of these crimes without reference to the acts this pitiful excuse for a priest, this vile predator, perpetrated on my beloved son. It will shock and revolt, but I have decided to include reference to ‘one’ of these crimes, only one of many my son was subjected to over the years.
I have edited substantive portions I consider too graphic and invite you to skip the following section if you find it too distressing. I ask you to share my pain and remember my son was only fourteen years of age when this happened.
“He turned into the park on the right side of the road as you head into town. Being after lunch on a Wednesday there was no one about and he drove down a dirt road to where there is a heavy planting of trees, I think they were Poplars or something like that. He drove the car into the middle of all these trees and it would have been difficult for anyone going past to see us. I was expecting to have to give him a head job but he then said to me “You haven’t orgasmed. How would you like to orgasm? It feels great.”
(6 lines deleted)
I could tell that he was starting to become annoyed and angry with this. I felt very uncomfortable”. I felt that it would be something that I would enjoy from what he told me. I discovered that I didn’t like it at all. I didn’t want to say this to him because he was becoming angry anyway because he couldn’t give me an erection. I said, “It’s no good it won’t go hard. It’s uncomfortable. It’s hurting. It’s not going to go hard.” He then sat up a little annoyed and said, “Okay. I know what we can do. I know another way to make you orgasm.” I said, “How?” He said “have sex.” I said “How do we do that?” I really didn’t know what he meant. I knew men and women had sex together but I couldn’t understand what he was suggesting by the two of us having sex. He then said, “Okay what I will do is
(4 lines deleted)
I had heard about homosexuals but I didn’t understand that having sex like that was what homosexuals did. I just didn’t know about these sorts of things. Like the oral sex, I just accepted whatever Father Fletcher told me and if he said this is what you do to orgasm I just accepted this was alright, it was normal.
(18 lines deleted)
This continued the pain but I didn’t cry out. I was crying, tears were running down my face. The pain inside me was unbelievable but I couldn’t move, I couldn’t cry out. I was in so much pain that I laid across the seat with both my hands clenched. I remember my knuckles being white and he was just
(1 line deleted)
For some silly reason I looked up and again I just focused on that bloody silly St Christopher’s Medal he had hanging near the steering wheel. It was as if I just focused on that it would take all the pain away and make me forget what was happening but it didn’t.
(13 lines deleted)
I was sobbing and he could see the tears running down my face and the pain I was in. He just hugged me and cuddled me into him.
(8 lines deleted)
He told me, “That’s your first one and you will have more from now on.”It was really weird. Just like a parent congratulating a kid for scoring a goal in a sports game or something like that. He could see I was still in terrible pain and crying but he said nothing about this. I then bent down and pulled my pants up and he then started to tidy himself up and fix his manner of dress. I then sat back in the car. He went around and got in the driver’s side. He then lit up a cigarette and had a smoke before he drove off. I was still sobbing and he said, “Are you alright?” I said, “It’s still hurting a bit.” He said, “That’s okay. It’s only natural, it will stop.”
He then drove to a small shop in Paterson and bought a can of coke. He didn’t buy two, just one for both of us to share. He turned around and drove into town and let me out near the school. All the way back from Paterson he just kept on to me about this being our secret. He kept saying “No one else is to know about this. It is great you have had your first orgasm.”
(3 lines deleted)
He kept emphasising more than usual that this was a secret and I was to tell no one about it.”
What you have just read is not only a parent’s worst nightmare but so much more. The pain of that stays with me always and I have no hope that it will ever leave me. I know Daniel carries it with him forever.
These details were so horrid that one DPP solicitor broke down after reading Daniel’s statement and asked to be taken off the case which
was upsetting to hear as those solicitors are so used to reading sexual assault briefs.
Eventually, Daniel was let stand down from the witness box. He had acquitted himself to the best of his ability. He had courageously waded through a mire of the most disgusting abuse descriptions and a fairly predictable, but upsetting, cross examination.
He had been checked about a date and period of time from his youth when he had said in his police statement that he missed some school because of glandular fever and alleged abuse had happened then. In our own bloody home for goodness sake! The school roll was produced and the absences marked didn’t support what Dan had said. Daniel was asked if he could explain that and he said he couldn’t, he just remembered being sick.
I could have explained it. The symptoms of glandular fever with swollen neck glands, very sore throat, and fatigue and fevers were very similar to what he experienced with chronic tonsillitis and it’s no wonder he may have been confused about the nature of the illness that had caused him to miss school after one lot of holidays and miss it he did. I remember the priest himself came to the house once to anoint Daniel with the Blessing of the Sick because he was so debilitated with one of these illnesses. It’s bizarre and sad at the same time that a priest cannot remember performing this Sacrament but I do think he may have remembered coming to bless Daniel in the Intensive Care ward at the John Hunter Hospital after Dan had sustained a serious head injury after a fall.
Daniel told me one day that when he woke up after the brain surgery and saw Fletcher standing beside his bed he thought he had died and gone to hell.
20
Daniel was escorted from the courtroom and I was then called to give evidence and led in to the Courtroom by a court officer. I sat in the witness box and took a very deep breath, looked at the jury members and saw that they were ordinary men and women and surely that meant that they would be able to recognise that our family was an ordinary one as well. No obvious religious members sat amongst them as far as I could determine. This had concerned me as I was aware that the jury was drawn from the local community and Maitland had traditionally been a stronghold of the Catholic Church. The diocese of the Hunter Valley had been known as the Maitland Diocese from its inception in 1847 until 1995 when the name was changed to the Maitland Newcastle Catholic Diocese.
I took a long look at Fletcher in the dock. He had his head down and would not meet my gaze. Perhaps that was just as well as I may have been unwise enough to shout at him. He knew that I now knew him for what he was, a criminal of the worst kind. He would remember those conversations I had had with him about my worries about Daniel and his false reassurances that all boys became secretive in their teenage years. The sight of the mother of the victim leaping into the dock with hands reaching for his neck would have given the legal tables a shake up. No. Two and a half years of dedicated police work could not be wasted.
I did agree that Daniel was my eldest son, born at the Mater Hospital and I did agree that I understood what he had alleged had happened to him at the hands of our friend, now ex-friend, Father James Patrick Fletcher. I confirmed some of the circumstances of the times when Daniel had said he was abused. The gentle questioning by the Prosecution was welcome as I was feeling very nervous and strained. I was asked to leave the Court room while a matter was discussed and I never did find out what it involved. Daniel was in the green room when I went in and we had time for a hug and a cry before I was recalled. Daniel had to wait outside in case he was needed to give further evidence.
When I went back in, it was time for my cross examination. I was asked to look at Daniel’s enrolment forms for St. Peter’s and note that I had given the name of a friend, who had older sons at the school, as a contact person and there was reference to her son as a person with whom Daniel was acquainted. I agreed that I had trusted the woman at the time and that was in 1989. Up until that moment, there had been no sign of that particular family but I knew they were very staunch supporters of Fletcher. He was their friend and they had enjoyed a long association with them. They have five sons. I knew they had been very kind to Mrs. Fletcher, the priest’s aged mother. You see, they had been our friends too and our photo albums are sprinkled with memories of social occasions we enjoyed with them and Fletcher and his family. The husband was the Confirmation sponsor of one of our sons and I can clearly recall telling that lady I was worried about Daniel and the change in his personality as a teenager.
In that instant, I could see what Barker was trying to establish. If the mother of the victim trusted this woman, then that woman could be regarded as a reliable witness. Of course she was a reliable witness and I knew she had integrity but all the supporters of Fletcher were victims as well. They did not want to believe such terrible things about their friend. I said once to a non believer who rang to harass me that if all the people in the world who didn’t want to believe the accusations were lined up, then you would find John and Pat at the head of the line as we definitely did not want this to be true. However, we knew, as surely as we knew that the sun was going to rise each day, that we were hearing the truth from our beloved son.
I was also able to tell the court that Daniel had suffered a very serious bout of Glandular Fever one Christmas. I remember saying that Daniel had missed Christmas because of it. The judge asked me to explain my statement and I qualified it by saying that Daniel struggled out of bed to look at his presents and then collapsed into his bed for the rest of the day and also the next. He missed Christmas. I was told that I had finished and was allowed to sit in the court room. Warm smiles of encouragement from family and friends helped me settle as much as I could in the circumstances.
John was ushered in next. I watched him as he swore on the bible as I had done and wondered if Daniel had also done that. He was also led through a series of identifying statements and then he got the question that I would have liked.
“Can you describe the relationship between your family and the accused?” he was asked.
We all leaned forward willing John to say that the boys were excited every time the priest called in, to say that he always bought presents for the boys, and to say that Fletcher took a very special interest in Daniel. He may have been able to mention the meals cooked, the buttons sewed on priestly shirts or the friendship that had developed between my mother and the priest’s mother. John didn’t get these details out but did mention that the boys liked Fletcher to call in. He could have mentioned, if given the chance, that when we went on holidays, touring around the eastern states, the boys always spent their pocket money on buying bloody souvenir spoons for Fletcher. He never had too many, he just bought more spoon racks to display them.
He was also asked about the missing bag of Daniel’s clothes and I thought how wily Barker was as mothers’ know of such details, not busy dads. John was asked how he would have known that the clothes were Daniel’s and he mentioned the school logo. A keen mum knows where the repairs and tears are on the uniforms that she launders every day and could probably recognise items in a clothing pool. Those missing clothes had become very important. On one of the occasions of abuse, Daniel had changed into his shop clothes when he was with Fletcher and then the priest had dropped him at his place of work. The school clothes were inadvertently left in the priest’s car and because it was the last week of the school year, there were no more chances for Fletcher to see Daniel secretly. An innocent man would have casually dropped that bag at home and said that Daniel left it behind after an innocent lift home from Maitland. Instead, the clothes “turned up at school” early the next year when Fletcher resumed his evil actions.
Afterwards, John was very angry with himself for not being able to describe the relationship between Fletcher and his sons. He actually said that he thought that he had let the family down and we glumly agreed.
I had sadness for him as I know how difficult the whole process had been for him. It’s bloody hard sitting in that box and only being able to answer specific questions. Aunty Paula to the rescue a
gain! Just before John left the stand, Ian Barker leaned over to him and said something which we didn’t catch. Later my sister asked John what he had said and Paula quipped that he had asked John if he would do his tax. Laughs all round and I think John felt better.
When Luke was called in next, John and I were sitting together in the court room. We sat together for the rest of the trial and I was certainly comforted by his presence and I guess it showed solidarity from us given these dreadful circumstances. Luke waved away the bible and took the alternate oath. Luke was able to tell the court that he and his brothers thought that Fletcher was a top sort of bloke and he did mention the sweets the priest always had in his car. Of course alarm bells never rang for us in the past. Perhaps if he had worn a trench coat instead of the clerical collar, we would have had serious thoughts about the lollies and about the way he encouraged the adulation of the kids. No, he wore the garb of a demure catholic priest.
Into the court room, out of the court room, we trooped as a group and as instructed. John discovered his mobile phone had been stolen during one of the sessions and he was very indignant. After a few startled comments we realised we were in a court house and there were dishonest people about. It was a bit of a jolt to remember that, as I suppose we thought people were like ourselves, innocent victims caught up in matters beyond their control.
The next witness for the Prosecution was an ex neighbour of ours. He was able to testify that Daniel was indeed out and about one night in Glen Oak when he was about fifteen years old. He told the Court that Daniel looked upset when confronted by one of his guests at a party and that Daniel said he had been out chasing his dog which had run off. That night was the occasion of one of the specific charges when Daniel had met the priest at the river near our home. He had told the court, I learned later, that he had to stand on his ‘tippy toes” while Fletcher had anal intercourse with him. A true and gut wrenching statement from a young boy’s memory. All the way through this terrible account, my son used the language of a little boy when describing his ordeal. In the retelling of his experience, he became that little altar boy once more.
Holy Hell Page 9