{"id":735,"date":"2019-05-07T22:35:17","date_gmt":"2019-05-07T12:35:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.pbw.id.au\/blog\/?p=735"},"modified":"2021-07-27T16:33:35","modified_gmt":"2021-07-27T06:33:35","slug":"the-willing-suspension-of-disbelief","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/2019\/05\/the-willing-suspension-of-disbelief\/","title":{"rendered":"The Willing Suspension of Disbelief"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

[Published in Quadrant April 2019, and on Quadrant Online as Memoirs of an Abused Altar Boy<\/a>, which included links to various documents.]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2026so as to transfer from our inward nature a human interest and a semblance of truth sufficient to procure for these shadows of imagination that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith.                                                 Samuel Taylor Coleridge<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In May of 2015, the royal commission came to town, and opened\npublic hearings in the Ballarat Magistrates\u2019 Court on Tuesday the 19th<\/sup>,\nwith Justice McClennan presiding. Counsel Assisting, Gail Furness SC, outlined\nthe evidence that was expected to be given, and a number of victims gave\nevidence about the abuse they suffered. The next day\u2019s proceedings opened with\nthe evidence of Gordon Hill about his abuse at the hands of priests and nuns\nwhile he lived at St Joseph\u2019s Home in Sebastopol near Ballarat. He was followed\nby number of other witnesses, some of whom alleged that they had informed the\nthen Father George Pell about abuse centred on the Ballarat East parish, where\nPell was, for some time, an assistant priest. David Ridsdale also repeated his\nallegation that Pell attempted to bribe him to keep quiet about his abuse at\nthe hands of his uncle, the then Fr Gerald Ridsdale.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

All of these allegations about Pell had been widely canvassed before, but Gordon Hill\u2019s opening statement, completely unrelated to Pell, was sensational, and coloured all of the reporting of the day. The Ballarat Courier headlined Ballarat abuse survivor Gordon Hill tells of ‘dungeon’ assaults<\/em>; Melbourne\u2019s Age had Memories of abuse at St Joseph’s Orphanage, Ballarat still haunt Gordon Hill at 72<\/em>. Online, The Daily Mail had two stories: the verbose \u2019Father wants to cleanse you, 29′: Nun’s chilling words to a young boy, 5, who was given a NUMBER instead of a name when he was raped by a priest in ‘horror room’ for the first time<\/em>; and the more succinct Nun laughed after priest’s abuse: victim<\/em>. This latter headline was also used by news.com.au<\/a>\u2019s online site. ABC News online had Child sex abuse inquiry: Victim had teeth pulled out by nuns with pliers, royal commission hears<\/em>. Later in the year, the ABC got down to brass tacks with Abuse survivor Gordon Hill calls for Catholic Church to properly compensate victims, not offer apologies<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gordon, at a very young age, was placed in a home in the town of Gordon. Just before his third birthday, he was taken to St Joseph\u2019s Home by bus. He has \u201cvivid memories\u201d of other toddlers entering the bus as it travelled to St Joseph\u2019s. In Gordon\u2019s telling, <\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[t]here are three categories of kids in St Joey’s. There were kids who came to St Joey’s during the day for school, then there was other ones that still had outside links with a relative\u2026 Lastly, there were the kids that didn’t have anybody outside at all\u2026<\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gordon was in the last category, the \u201cdrones,\u201d as he called them. The drones received no<\/em> schooling. He did not discover his surname<\/em> until he was 10 or 11, when he was told he had a younger brother in the Home, and that he had had an older, who was by then working in the associated home for the aged. Until then, he was known only by his locker number, 29. It is unlikely that this depersonalisation applied to the day pupils or, by extension, to the category two pupils, but only to the 25 \u201cdrones.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first assault against Gordon occurred when he was 5 or 6. A nun told him, \u201cFather wants to cleanse you, 29.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was thrown into one of the horror rooms where I was made to strip off and get into an old fashioned small bath. A priest gave me a drink\u2026I have no memory of what happened after that. When I came to, I hurt like bloody hell. I was bleeding from the top of my back, down to my shins. My genitals and my bottom were the worst, they hurt like they were on fire. I later discovered I had bite marks on my privates. I don’t know how long I was out for. When I woke up\u2026the nun\u2026was waiting outside. She was laughing – big joke to her\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

There were three stages to progress through the Home, as also described by other St Joseph\u2019s old boys: nursery until 5, school dormitory from 6 to 13, and farm-boys\u2019 dormitory for those 14 to 17 years old. The locker number by which Gordon was known would not have been assigned in the nursery. Gordon says that the abuse he endured as \u201c29\u201d continued while he was in the school dorm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As well as his regular \u201ccleansing,\u201d one of the three priests who abused him during his stay devised a devilish, if less physically traumatic, form of abuse when Gordon was 9 or 10. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was chosen to be an altar boy\u2026The priest used to strip me down in the vestry, touch me and dress me in the altar boy outfit, which was a pink smock. He would then make me sit on the floor beneath the padded bench in the confessional box. I used to enter the confessional box before the parishioners came in for Saturday night confession. The priest then used to come in and sit on the padded bench. He would pull me by my hair, rub me, and I had to play with his genitals while he listened to confession.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

If I made a noise as I was sitting beneath the priest’s bench in the confessional box, he would whack me across the face to shut me up. If any Catholics had known what was going on, they would have been horrified. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the things I noticed during the confession was that the women got off lightly when getting absolution from the priest. The guys sometimes had to pay out money in order to get absolution. The priest told the men how much he wanted from them. He asked some of the guys for up to 5 pounds, in those days it was a lot of money. I used to hear the person confessing slip through a piece of crinkly paper beneath the meshing that separated the priest and the public in the confessional box. The priest took the money and put it in his pocket; I could hear it crinkling.<\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The \u201ccrinkly paper\u201d is a problem. Paper currency, even when near-new,\ncould not be described as \u201ccrinkly.\u201d This is a detail too far. If the priest\nhad demanded \u00a35 for absolution, then given absolution without further fuss, payment of the bribe can be assumed. Every\nadult Catholic in the 50s would have understood that the priest\u2019s demand for\npayment was a grave sin, and even if he didn\u2019t, he would have resented the five\nquid. Did no-one complain to the Bishop?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Again, the bodies are hard to locate in the confessional. Cramped under the bench, out of sight behind the priest\u2019s legs and cassock, how is Gordon to access the priest\u2019s genitals? How is the priest to \u201cpull him by his hair,\u201d and rub him? Consider also the intimacy of the confessional. Confessions were usually spoken at barely above a whisper, with the heads of both confessor and penitent close to the grill. While the grill obscured shapes, movement revealed them. If Gordon had made a noise, it would have been heard by the penitent; if the priest had been able to whack him across the face, the movement would have been seen and the whack certainly heard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The story of the \u201chorror rooms\u201d was not over.  Gordon has himself graduating to the farm-boys at the age of 11 or 12. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2026the sexual abuse got worse\u2026 as I got older it went on to the physical and dungeon type of thing. The horror rooms, they had medieval paintings, a big wooden X cross on one wall. I used to be stripped down and tied up and sexually abused by it.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

If this description does not give readers pause, nothing will. This scene, with the addition of black latex costumes, would not be out of place in a sadomasochistic dominatrix fantasy. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Extreme forms of corporal punishment were practised by the nuns. For serious offences there was \u201cbattle stations.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the hall we would be stripped off in front of all the other kids and made to lie down on the ground. We were stretched out with a big kid on each arm and a kid on each leg and held up in the air. The nuns hit us with drill sticks\u2026 They were about 1.5 metres long or sometimes we would be hit with a small whip\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was thrashed with a drill stick across the bare skin of my back and buttocks. About after 10 whacks the drill stick broke. I still have scars on both sides of my torso because the sticks broke on an angle. When I started to bleed on the back, they turned me around to the other side and whacked me again. I have the scars on my waist straight across from where I was beaten, and I was bruised everywhere.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

While this punishment was public and, to an extent, ritualised, there were severe ad hoc<\/em> punishments. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sometimes the nuns would punish us by pulling a tooth out with a pair of pliers or whacking us across the face with an engineer’s hammer, which broke a lot of our teeth. I’ve even got scars to prove that. This happened to me a few times. On one occasion I was hit across the mouth for eating carrots from the garden I was weeding in with a lump of wood, and I still have the scars on my face.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBattle stations,\u201d because it was a special punishment for special infringements, was often accompanied by solitary confinement. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2026what we called a dungeon\u2026was a four by four room away from the orphanage down by the incinerator. That was where I was left with a bucket, a soundproof door, a light above me, there was no windows. For a bed, I had a concrete slab and three or four hessian bags for blankets. I stayed down there for about a month. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nThere was still one punishment in the armoury.\nIn the mid-50s (Gordon was 11 in 1954) he follows some \u201cbigger kids\u201d into a\nblackberry patch outside the grounds. With threats to keep him quiet, they\nthrow him into the briar patch. It\u2019s getting dark, so he follows a light,\n\n\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2026but it turned out it was a little hut where they used to clean the cans from the sewerage. \u2026 The weather was freezing, so I got up on the bench and there was two or three old bags\u2026which I got underneath and slept there for the night.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I woke up with a very sore head and realised I was lying in a clean and comfortable bed\u2026in\u2026the Ballarat Base Hospital. I must have fallen off the bench and hit my head, because I had a headache – I had bandages on my head. I heard the door open and a woman in a white coat came in, followed by\u2026the matron, then a person in plain clothes and a policeman.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The woman\u2026asked me how I got so bruised and battered\u2026I had about six or seven teeth missing\u2026they couldn’t work out how\u2026the mouth was so badly damaged. They asked me why nobody had reported it. The doctor asked me my name\u2026All I could say was ’29’. \u2026 I tried to tell them about the abuse\u2026I tried to explain to them that I came from the home, because I didn’t know it was called St Joey’s, that I was physically and sexually abused there and how I’d gotten scars on my body. The copper in uniform turned around and said, ‘No, he’s just a runaway kid that we’ve been looking for, for nearly three or four days\u2026we’ve picked up runaways before’. I said, ‘I wasn’t running away\u2026\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2026From that day on, I trusted no one. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nThere are a few things to note about this\nincident.  If Gordon is, indeed, the\nrunaway they are looking for, he has been unconscious for three or four days.\nHe is from 10 to 13 years old, but he doesn\u2019t know the name of the Home. By the\nage of 10 or 11, on his own telling, he had discovered his surname, and he has\npresumably known his Christian name from the nursery, or even the home in\nGordon.\n\n\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nBack at St Joseph\u2019s, there is retribution for\nthis disappearance.\n\n\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2026they tied me down on a bed and had pads on my head and neck with wires coming out. \u2026 they put a catheter in me and then another tube in my bottom so they didn’t have to clean up the mess after me. There was a big light that shone into my face when I felt intense pain as my head bounced off the bed. Then I heard noises again and I started to feel the pain again. It was like some sort of electric shock therapy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nThis is not punishment; it is interrogation<\/em> by torture.\n\n\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They wanted to know what I had told them at the hospital\u2026 I don’t know how many days<\/em> that went on for. (My italics<\/em>.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After that, I was taken down to the dungeon\u2026and locked in a room made out of limestone. There was a thick door with a peephole and a slot down by the floor, and I had wheat bags for blankets. I got bread and water morning and night. Sometimes I could not eat because my teeth hurt so much and I ended up feeding the bread to a little mouse, it was a little pet mouse I found.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was there for about over a month. Bloody cold down there too. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nThis is another show-stopper. The nuns had an\nECT machine in a back room somewhere, and they would bring it out only in the\nmost exceptional circumstances, such as interrogating runaways. This\ninterrogation could go on for days, and was administered without anaesthetics\nor muscle relaxants, for obvious reasons. This was in the mid-50s.\n\n\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nThe Child and Adolescent Unit was established in\nthe Lake Alice Psychiatric Hospital in New Zealand in 1972, and closed amid\ncontroversy in 1978. In a widely-reported scandal, the psychiatrist in charge\nof the unit was accused of having administered ECT without anaesthetics to two\ncomplainants. Two enquiries in 1976\/7 investigated the complaints. The\npsychiatrist, Dr Selwyn Leeks, resigned his position. As a result of extensive\npublicity, the setting up of a class action, and the Government\u2019s provision of\na large compensation fund, the number of complainants steadily rose, until by\n1999, there were 120. It is not known whether Dr Leeks had been consulting with\nthe nuns of St Joseph\u2019s Home on the management of difficult children. At least\nhe was trained to administer ECT.\n\n\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nThe farm-boys were sometimes \u201cfarmed out\u201d to work\nin businesses and properties in the region. \n\n\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is some of the places I went to: I travelled to Merbein near Mildura; Wentworth; a sheep farm in Hamilton; an eel farm in Apollo Bay.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the 1950s, I was about 14 years old, I got sent to work at the priest’s dad’s place. This was the priest that sexually abused me in St Joey’s. His dad was in his 60s and ran this [REDACTED]. \u2026 The priest and his relative used to come into the shed together and sexually abuse me. One of them would hold me down and the other tied my legs up and blindfold me, so I had no chance of getting away. The priest and the relative took turns to abuse me. \u2026I used to try to think of other things while they were abusing me. I used to think about the babies and the kids I helped look after at St Joey’s and try to put the abuse out of my mind. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWhen he leaves St Joseph\u2019s, he goes to live with\nhis mother in Echuca, and works in the ordnance factory for three years.\n\n\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After I finished\u2026I got a job on the farm, and\u2026I was out there for about six years. I only used to come into town once every three months\u2026 One day my boss asked me, ‘You can’t read and write, Hilly, why don’t you bloody well learn?’ He took me into an ABC shop and I picked up a set of books with attached cassette tapes so that I could teach myself how to read and write, since I had never been taught at St Joey’s. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nGordon worked on the farm between the ages of 20\nand 26.  He turned 26 in 1969. The first\nABC Shop opened, not in Ballarat, but in Sydney, in 1981, when Gordon was 38 or\n39 years old.\n\n\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the basis of the contradictions and incredulities in this\nstatement alone, there are numerous grounds for scepticism. The casual reader with\ninternet access and a quizzical frame of mind would quickly find reasons for\nserious doubts about it. Yet it was presented before the royal commission\napparently without being queried by Counsel Assisting or the small army of\ncommission support staff. Half a billion dollars and four years should buy a\nmore rigorous process than is obvious in this instance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The commission\u2019s job in this respect had been made considerably\neasier by Gordon Hill himself and the efforts of the Senate and the Victorian\nParliament. In 2005, the Senate Inquiry into Children in Institutional Care\nissued its report. This was nine years after then Archbishop Pell had initiated\nthe Melbourne Response, and eight years after the Australian Bishops had\nadopted Towards Healing. The Inquiry drew responses from former residents from\n2003 to 2005. St Joseph\u2019s Home was\nmentioned in a number of these submissions\u2013those of Bryan Cronin (submission\n290), Kevin Crouch (454), Alan Coleman (471), Gordon Hill (501), and an\nanonymous submission, number 130.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eight years later the Family and Community Development Committee\nof the Victorian Parliament tabled the report of its Inquiry into the Handling\nof Child Abuse by Religious and Other Organisations. The Inquiry took\nsubmissions in 2012 and 2013. Gordon Hill made a submission, and he, along with\nanother St Joseph\u2019s old boy, Joseph Saric, gave testimony to the Inquiry. Unlike\nthe royal commission, testimony was not merely the reading of a submission. The\nBallarat District Group sent a joint submission. It is in the form of a catalogue\nof abuses and the responses to them and no incidents of abuse are associated\nwith any individual victim or perpetrator. The list of schools attended\nincluded \u201cSt Joseph\u2019s Orphanage,\u201d Ballarat. One of the primary signatories was\na Gordon Hall.  Given the inclusion of St\nJoseph\u2019s in the list, I suspect that \u201cHall\u201d is a typographical error, and that\nthis signatory was in fact Gordon Hill.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Apart from the joint document, Gordon has made three submissions\nto inquiries and given off the cuff testimony to one. This enthusiasm lets\ninterested parties see the remarkable development of Gordon\u2019s memory of events\nat St Joseph\u2019s. Both Kevin Crouch and Alan Coleman received the type of\npunishment which Gordon Hill calls \u201cbattle stations.\u201d Kevin was three years\nolder than Gordon, so their terms of residence overlapped significantly. Alan\nwas older, arriving in 1936, and leaving in late 1945, a few months before\nGordon arrived. Bryan Cronin, on the other hand, was at St Joseph\u2019s during the\n60s. Gordon left in 1959 or 1960.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most of the personal submissions by St Joseph\u2019s old boys were to\nthe Senate inquiry, but the group submission to the Victorian inquiry throws\nsome interesting light on Gordon\u2019s story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gordon was the only one of all these old boys to make a public submission to the royal commission. That is probably because none of the others alleged sexual abuse by priests or nuns at St Joseph\u2019s. Bryan Cronin told a terrible story of sexual and physical abuse, but it was conducted by an older generation of alumni who, in the 60s, would volunteer to look after the residents on weekends. It is possible, indeed likely, that by the 60s the order was feeling the effects of aging membership and a drying up of vocations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most interesting of the earlier testimonies are those of Gordon himself. In his 2005 Senate submission, he mentions only one instance of sexual abuse, while on placement at a \u201cpub owned by the parents of the orphanage\u2019s priest.\u201d This abuse, which Gordon does not go into the details of, links to the more elaborate description in his commission statement. He adds a paragraph. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Actually, looking back I now realise that these was sexual abuse at the orphanage. The priest used to make us do things for what he called \u2018purification purposes\u2019. The nuns would also whack you across the genitals and bum while lining up for showers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nThis aside on \u201cpurification,\u201d bundled with being\nwhacked across the genitals and bum by nuns, will morph into the \u201ccleansing\u201d\nincidents in later versions. Gordon does not mention \u201c29\u201d at all.\n\n\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nAlan Coleman, in his submission, gives the\nrationale for the numbers. When he was six, he moved from the nursery to the\nschoolboys\u2019 dormitory, which housed children from six to thirteen years old.\n\n\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

it was run like a prison, every child had his own number I was number ninety six and all clothes were marked with your number even when we went for meals <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Names were not forgotten.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

when I was in grade three the nuns told us we were getting some boys from Nazareth house in Melbourne, one of the kids was named Alan Coleman, the nuns said we had to work out who was going to change his name, so the other guys changed his name to Joseph Coleman (Senate Inquiry 2005; A.Coleman) <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nRegarding his education, Gordon asserts to the\nSenate that he had received only one year<\/em>\nof schooling, and he introduces his story of learning to read and write with\ntapes from the \u201cABC shops.\u201d However, he relates a curious incident.\n\n\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2026if you were good enough to get in the band you would get to go outside sometimes. I was in the band and once we went to a Corpus Christie procession at St Pats. About 30 kids and all the instruments etc were loaded onto the back of a semi-trailer to get there and on the way back, the driver took a bend too fast and we all went off the back, instruments and all. We were battered and bruised (not enough though to go to hospital)\u2026(SI 2005) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s not so much the great good fortune of the 30 in not being\nseriously injured, as it is the fact that Gordon was in the band that is\ninteresting here. It is inconceivable that he could be excluded from school,\nyet learn to play an instrument well enough to be in the school<\/em> band. By 2013, Gordon seems to have forgotten about the band\nand the accident.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Alan Coleman was more isolated than Gordon. He never knew his\nparents; there was certainly no-one for him on the outside. Yet Alan was\neducated through eight grades of primary schooling to the point where he topped\nthe class in an exam to determine which two pupils could progress to St\nPatrick\u2019s College. Bryan Cronin, in the 60s, claims to have been put into a\ngrade for classes more or less at random throughout his school years, but he\nwas in class.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Physical injuries are witnessed to by an apparently inordinate\namount of scarring carried by Gordon\u2019s body, though its provenance may be\nuncertain.  In 2005\u2019s testimony, the side\nof Gordon\u2019s mouth was scarred when a boy in the scullery threw a fork at him,\npenetrating his cheek. A nun dragged him out by the still-embedded fork,\nremoved it, and stitched him up with a needle and thread. In no subsequent\ntestimony does the fork reappear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After his \u201cbattle stations\u201d beating, he was thrown into solitary for three weeks, with another needle and thread to stitch himself up. He had \u201ca bucket for a toilet, a bench for a bed that had no mattress and one blanket.\u201d Food was kicked through a kick plate at the bottom of the door. Arrangements for the bucket are not revealed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In later tellings, the penalty for eating carrots from the garden is so severe that one wonders why anyone would risk it.  But in 2005, memories were not so stressful. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One time I was caught in the garden eating carrots by the nuns \u2013 I got 6 hours solitary after being belted with a cane\u2026(SI 2005) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nThere is no mention of pliers or hammers, broken\nteeth or jawbones, but the hammer does make an appearance elsewhere. In the\nsubmission of the Ballarat\nDistrict Group to the Victorian Parliamentary inquiry, one of the abuses\nmentioned is hitting on the face and head with a ballpein hammer, but it is one\nparticular Christian Brother \u2013 no-one at St Joseph\u2019s \u2013 who is responsible.\n\n\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Neither is there any mention of blackberry patches or night soil\ncans or waking in hospital. No mention either of ECT punishment or\ninterrogation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gordon\u2019s story does stabilise by 2013, the time of the Victorian\ninquiry. Most of the elements of the commission testimony are there, but in\nvery different colours. Even in the two months between his submission and his being\ncalled before the inquiry, the first abuse story changes. In the submission, he\nis seated in a small bath; in verbal testimony, it becomes a chair; and for the\ncommission, it reverts to a bath. Another significant change occurs in the newly-remembered\nblackberry story. In his submission, he runs away, staying in the washing shed\nfor two weeks, and being discovered when he becomes ill. Two months later, he is\naway for two days, and then only because he becomes too ill to return.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is no mention even in 2013 of the abuse in and of the\nconfessional: it is unique to the commission statement, one of the most\nshocking stories for the rump of believing Catholics. Not only does it\ndemoralise Catholics, but plays to the paradigmatic complaint of the\nReformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Compiling this catalogue of inconsistencies and contradictions\nis only possible because Gordon Hill has been such an enthusiastic witness at\nevery inquiry that has been conducted over the past fourteen years.  Even so, the final version of this tale is so\nextreme, and in some details so caricatured, that any normally attentive\nlistener, let alone a barrister or a judge, would be sceptical. All of Gordon\u2019s\nprevious documents were publicly available, but it seems commission staff have\nnot availed themselves of the opportunity; or worse, they have seen them and\nchosen to ignore them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The introduction of Gordon Hill\u2019s sensational testimony\nimmediately before allegations of Cardinal Pell\u2019s involvement in cover-up\ncannot have been coincidental. It makes the commission\u2019s failures of diligence\nall the more culpable. Nor is it the case that Furness SC and Justice McClennan\nlack stubbornly persistent scepticism; it was on display, for example, in their\nrefusal to believe that Cardinal Pell was not in on what the commission seems\nto view as a Church-wide criminal protection racket.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Justice McClennan is using the platform provided by the royal\ncommission to push for legislative changes to constrain the directions provided\nby judges according to \u201cempirically validated\u201d views of the reliability of\nevidence from children in sex offence cases, including, critically, the\nreliability of memories. Justice McClennan\u2019s own views are, of course,\nempirically validated, and the commission has issued its own commissions for\nresearch, so far publishing fifty reports, none of which seem to have\nchallenged the views of members of the commission. A constant theme in Justice\nMcClennan\u2019s recent speeches is the unreliability of \u201ccommon-sense\u201d views about\nthe reliability of memory, and the unreliability of judicial views of the common-sense\nviews in jurors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If the common-sense of jurors is to be denigrated, what is the point of having juries in these cases? If both the common and judicial senses of judges are to be likewise denigrated and in pressing need of redirection by members of Parliament, what is the point of having experienced judges? If the existing case law relating to sexual offences is so polluted by empirically invalid assumptions, what is the point of the common law in these matters? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are tremendous difficulties in replacing the creaking structures of the law and the intellectual limitations of a dozen ordinary folk with a system in which scientific expertise is given its rightfully prominent place, though judicial radicals can but try. The current royal commission provides a rare opportunity to advance this process. One assumes that the testimony of Gordon Hill is an example of the evidence that would be stamped with the judge\u2019s nihil obstat<\/em> in an empirically enlightened court, even as it was in Justice McClennan\u2019s empirically enlightened commission. Still, as the Justice complained to the Australian Lawyers Alliance NSW Annual State conference, some court decisions concerning child sexual abuse are problematical. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

They derive from what judges\u2019(sic)<\/em> thought they knew about how genuine complainants behave and what they thought they knew about how memory works.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Those assumptions have turned out, with the benefit of empirical research, to be flawed. However, they became embedded in the fabric of the common law and proved difficult even for Parliament to dislodge <\/strong>(my emphasis). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHere\u2019s a toast, then: to the common law!\n\n\n\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[Published in Quadrant April 2019, and on Quadrant Online as Memoirs of an Abused Altar Boy, which included links to various documents.] \u2026so as to transfer from our inward nature a human interest and a semblance of truth sufficient to procure for these shadows of imagination that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which … Continue reading “The Willing Suspension of Disbelief”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[18,52,21,57,39],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-735","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-faith","category-law","category-politics","category-quadrant","category-royal-commission"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8SCfl-bR","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1076,"url":"https:\/\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/2022\/08\/the-forgotten-vaccine\/","url_meta":{"origin":735,"position":0},"title":"The Forgotten Vaccine","author":"Me","date":"Fri 12th Aug '22","format":"video","excerpt":"This article was published in Quadrant Online on 14th September, 2021. A paywalled article in the BMJ begins, \u2026the US National Institutes of Health infectious diseases chief, Anthony Fauci, appeared on YouTube to reassure Americans about the safety of the\u2026vaccine. \u201cThe track record for serious adverse events is very good.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Covid-19"","block_context":{"text":"Covid-19","link":"https:\/\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/category\/culture\/covid-19\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":855,"url":"https:\/\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/2020\/03\/the-burden-of-proof-and-the-pell-case\/","url_meta":{"origin":735,"position":1},"title":"The Burden of Proof and the Pell Case","author":"admin","date":"Sat 7th Mar '20","format":false,"excerpt":"[Originally published by Quadrant Online on 30th December 2019. 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You\u2019re on Qatar\u2019s Candid Camera.] Two weeks ago, Comedy Central\u2019s Jim Jefferies responded to the Christchurch massacre with a hit piece on Avi Yemini, who is one of the emerging breed of conservative citizen reporters producing videos\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Politics"","block_context":{"text":"Politics","link":"https:\/\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/category\/culture\/politics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/img.youtube.com\/vi\/odCQhAezB_Q\/0.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/735","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=735"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/735\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":930,"href":"https:\/\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/735\/revisions\/930"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=735"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=735"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=735"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}