The following plaque was provided to representatives of Carelink for forwarding to George Pell on July 19, 2006.
The plaque was accompanied by the text below with a request to be informed of how many points the Church can comply with?.
The plaque was returned with no accompanying explanation as to why it was not forwarded to Cardinal Pell. Carelink requested that evidence supporting a victims claim not be published as it may put at risk the employment of an individual who is unqualified and inexperienced.
Carelink : "OK, I mean I think today is really about what how you want to do it, not us in telling you how you want to do it but ..."
I want to be able to go home and say to my family, I have been heard, there is genuine understanding of what we as a family have been through. I want to be able to repeat that to them.
This has had an enormous cost to me in many ways. It has put my family through indescribable pain and suffering which I feel should be acknowledged.
I too have suffered through this and I want to get to a point where I no longer recall the pain suffered through being raped, forced to perform oral sex on a supposed man of the cloth, or to recall the terrible retribution enacted on me when I and others did speak out. I have no desire to have to recall the pain of the beatings and the dis-functionality forced onto my family. To recall the pain felt as an 8 year when threatened with an eternal life in hell, and to have the full power and force of the church employed against me, or to feel again the anguish of being helpless and dis-empowered through the actions of the clergy through their threats of excommunication to take away from my family the one thing that was supposed to stand by them - their religion, to see a friend brutalised and die attempting to speak out and trying to seek justice from the religion which actively betrayed him and breached his stated wishes by burning all his possessions; to never again have to recall the deceit and injustice perpetrated by the Bishops of the time and their administrators, of being scapegoated, being bullied or the many horrible, depraved inhuman actions that were taken to protect those priests and to permit them to continue to sexually abuse many other children for many years after these issues had been brought to their attention, all these things that occurred were the result of actions instigated by the Church or through the Church.
I want to be able to say to my siblings, in particular to those who have been subjected to rape at the hands of in each case a priest and to those others of my family who suffered the torments which can only be administered through the use of unbridled power or mania via members of the congregation and nuns that their experiences will be acknowledged as well if they choose that and that their pain was caused through the repeated actions of abuse and the inactions of the church leadership and administration.
I want to be able to say to my family today that I will receive a written apology from the Pope, and from the Bishops, and from each individual who played a part in moving O'Donnell and others on so that the honour of the church was not sullied at the expense of the lives of many hundreds of children. Many of those victims have died as a result of these actions and until real actions are taken by the Church to address and rectify these past actions the Church and all who represent it will continue to accumulate the blood of more innocent victims onto their own hands, blood that will not disappear until the issues surrounding religious abuse are addressed.
I want to say to my family that the Church understands this and it is aware of the US Bishops charter and that the Church here in Australia, its parishioners and all who abhor the current manner in which the Church deals with victims know that there is a more befitting way to deal with those who have effectively been held hostage by the current unAustralian manner of its present response due to its inaction, the gross lack of leadership,management and dishonesty - I want to say to my family that there is no place or sign of that in God's church today.
I also want to say to them that I have found the Church to be something other than what I had experienced. I want to say them that those times are gone from the Church, it no longer treats people that way, despite all that is written about on this topic in the news and on the many thousands of victim and victim support sites on the Internet, even though it appears that the extent of religious abuse in the Catholic Church is only limited by where it does not have a presence.
I want to say to my wife and son that I have come here today and I have been treated justly and honestly and that I have not been discriminated against in any way and to say that I have been actively supported and genuinely assisted in this matter and that my medical needs and those of my family who may have a need as well on occasion are met for as long as is needed.
As well I want to be able to say to them that that part of the Church which was not vigilant, despite the many hundreds of complaints no longer has any support within the entire organisation of the church, no support from its administrators, its clergy and its employees. I feel these things I want to say to my family are valid things to expect when dealing with any entity, let alone one of the great religions of our time. A religion which should go down in history, not for the fact of having a current history of sexual abuse reaching back to earlier than the year 540, but of a religion having a current history that says it is genuinely dealing with the realities of its acts of religious abuse and is caring and understanding of the victims circumstances and is not simply paying them out and dumping them to survive unaided and abandoned as they have done in the past.
I want to say those many other victims that the despicable practice of binding victims to confidentiality agreements has by Pells' own words been ended, and I want to be able to say to them that the Church apologises for these past errors of judgement and that it releases those victims from that promise of silence and that the Church will, as has been done in the United States release its data and information and that it will act as again in the United States by willingly cooperating with other churches and ecclesial communities, other religious bodies,institutions of learning, and other interested organisations and individuals conducting research in this area.
I want to say to them that the compensation provided does at least cover their costs and that they should also be awarded the same degree of compensation for pain and suffering as would be awarded to someone in similar circumstances as a result of a legal action and that that compensation should also take into account the pain and suffering experienced by their families.
I want to say to them we have not again been made victims of discrimination, fraud and deceit, nor have they been abused in any way again through the actions of individuals representing or acting for or on behalf of the Catholic Church.
John Brown
