Unspeakable acts
In the car on the way to the prison, the crew was unusually quiet. We were due at the prison at 9am to see Bernard McGrath, a former brother of John of God, now a convicted paedophile, serving 39 years for crimes against children. No one knows, or likely ever will, the total number of his victims but we knew of more than 50 children, molested and raped while he was Brother Bernard, a teacher and headmaster in residential schools run by the Catholic order of St John of God in Australia and New Zealand.
Throughout the rolling scandal of clerical child abuse in Australia, the voice we have not heard is the voice of the perpetrators. I wanted to speak to these men to ask them face-to-face how they led their double lives, masquerading as our moral guardians while abusing children in their care, and to get from them what hidden details I could about the cover up by their superiors.
On these journeys when the interview ahead is hard, I will the journey to last longer, to give me more time to fix
