Ballarat Orphanage abuse victim devastated by decision not to lay charges against former superintendent
A Survivor's Story
By Charlotte King
It took Cheryl Bihari a lot of courage to speak out decades after she was abused.
(ABC News: Charlotte King)
A former resident of a children's home in Ballarat says she has been left devastated by a decision to drop sex abuse charges against her overseer.
Cheryl Bihari was seven when she was packed up with her four siblings and taken to the Ballarat Orphanage in 1963. Her mother was considered "unfit" for the role and her father was a criminal.
"Mum was in bed drunk and they decided that we had to be taken off her," Ms Bihari said. "My father was there and he asked if he could take us children. The answer was 'no'."
The superintendent — the man in charge of the home — was Hylton Sedgman.
"They'd have a trolley that you'd put your plate on and there was a tin, called a swill tin, for the pigs," she said. "And he would inspect those all the time to see that there was nothing in there for those pigs— if there was, whoever put it in there would get punished."
Soon after Ms Bihari arrived, the superintendent sought to reprimand her for talking in bed.
Cheryl was also abused during a rare day trip outside the orphanage. (Supplied: Cheryl Bihari)
"He came in the back door and he made me get out of bed, and go into the common room, where he lifted up my nightie, sexually assaulted me, and yeah, I had to hold his penis," she said.
"I was petrified of him.
"Then he put me over his knee and slapped me so hard and he said 'don't you ever, ever tell anybody', and he said 'now get back to bed'."
Ms Bihari cried herself to sleep, and for more than 50 years did what she was told.
"Nobody knew. I would not tell because I was embarrassed. I thought it was my fault because I was talking [in bed]. I'm thinking 'this is what's going to happen every time I talk at night'," she said.
In 2014, a detective from Taskforce SANO knocked on her front door asking about Mr Sedgman.
"And I broke down and said: 'He's dead'," she said. "He said: 'No, he's alive'."
She agreed to give a statement and became one of seven alleged victims — six women and one man — to form part of a criminal prosecution for historical child sex abuse.
Dropped case 'a kick in the guts'
Mr Sedgman was facing more than 30 charges.
"'I want to look this man in the face', I said. And I want to be able to tell him, what he did was wrong," Ms Bihari said.
About 60 former residents of Ballarat Orphanage received settlements for being abused by staff.
The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse excluded the Ballarat Orphanage from its public hearings because Mr Sedgman was due to face court. But after two years of delays, prosecutors were forced to drop the case, due to the 87-year-old's ill health.
"We were going to court, and I got a call from the DPP; they said 'Cheryl, we have a problem, it may not go through'," she said.
"I just said 'there's another kick in the guts isn't it? You have got all of us to come out and bring all of this forward, to go to court, and now it's not going to happen'." She said she had been robbed not only of a public forum to air the horrors at the home, but of any prospect of justice.
"He gets to go into a nursing home or a retirement village," Ms Bihari said. "That's the worst thing. I said 'he gets away with it, we all suffer'. No, I'm not happy."
Lawyer Penny Savidis has negotiated settlements for around 60 former residents of the Ballarat Orphanage, involving multiple perpetrators. "Our complaints span over about a 40-year period, so there are a number of individuals who have been identified by our clients as alleged offenders," she said.
"It's fair to say that abuse at the Ballarat Orphanage was systemic in nature over a lengthy period of time."
Marking out abuser's name 'the right thing to do'
Ms Savidis said she's not aware of a single criminal conviction against the home's former staff.
"Having a conviction against someone is quite a strong recording of guilt, and it's unfortunate for many survivors that's not an option, either because the alleged offender is deceased or because the prosecution decide not to proceed for whatever reason," she said.
Child and Family Services is the legal successor to the Ballarat Orphanage.
Mr Sedgman's name is printed in gold-plated lettering on an honours board in the organisation's current-day conference room.
Developers have bought the derelict orphanage site but it has been left untouched for years.
(ABC News: Charlotte King)
Chief executive Allan Joy decided earlier this year it was time to draw a line in the sand, and a red mark has now been placed through the name.
"We thought it was inappropriate to have a name on the honour board with somebody who's allegedly responsible for the serious abuse of many children in care," Mr Joy said. "If we came across any others, we'd do the same thing — it's just the right thing to do."
Weathered from the lifelong impacts of abuse, it's little comfort for the victims. "I don't trust people. I really do not trust people," Ms Bihari said. "[I've] just put up a big brick wall, [so] that nobody would hurt me."
Ms Bihari has three photos from her childhood — taken when her and her brothers and sisters went on short excursions to the Eureka Stockade park. "I like that because it's something I haven't got many of," she said.
"And I'm smiling, and I'm with my siblings, you know and they were really important to me back then, that I have them happy. And no one's hurting anybody."
Newcastle Anglican Diocese had 'do-nothing' approach to child sex abuse claims, royal commission finds
By Giselle Wakatama
Alleged perpetrators of abuse were not called to account in the Newcastle diocese, the report found.
(ABC News: Dan Cox)
The royal commission into child sexual abuse has found powerful paedophiles in the Anglican Diocese of Newcastle were operating under weak church leadership.
Thursday's report follows another into the national Anglican Church which found that every church diocese in the country, bar one, had received complaints of child sexual abuse in the past 35 years.
The commission looked at alleged child abuse, bullying and cover-ups within the Newcastle diocese, producing a report of more than 400 pages just on the Newcastle Anglicans.
It has found former Newcastle Anglican Bishop Roger Herft's response to abuse was "weak, ineffectual and noted a failure of leadership".
It added that there was a "do-nothing" approach in the diocese in response to child sexual abuse allegations.
Former Bishop Herft quit as the Anglican Archbishop of Perth in December last year after damning evidence about his leadership came to light.
Roger Herft stepped down as the
Archbishop of Perth last year
The commission found former Bishop Herft as well as another ex-Bishop, Alfred Holland, showed a distinct lack of leadership and alleged perpetrators were not called to account.
The commission has concluded a powerful network of insiders were operating in the diocese under Bishop Herft, including the defrocked former dean Graeme Lawrence.
"He often threatened alleged victims or their families with legal action after hearing allegations of child sexual abuse made against him," the commission found.
Father Peter Rushton died in 2007
without ever being convicted
The commission concluded that Bishop Herft, who has led the diocese from 1993 to 2005, must have know about the notorious paedophile.
"We are satisfied that, by the end of February 2003, Bishop Herft could have been in no doubt that Father Rushton had a history of behaviour that required further investigation," the report said.
"Bishop Herft's inaction with respect to Father Rushton contributed to the systematic failure of the diocese to make perpetrators accountable for their conduct."
Praise for two former bishops
There was praise in the royal commission's report about two former bishops from the diocese.
Former Bishop Greg Thompson resigned this year after a long fight to expose the decades-old culture of abuse and cover-ups in the diocese.
He told the commission he was the bishop not welcome in his own cathedral, after some parishioners actively tried to remove him and questioned his own claims about being abused.
"People thought their friendships were more important than the truth of what was going on in that diocese," the former bishop told the ABC.
He and another former Newcastle bishop, Brian Farran, "took appropriate responses against alleged perpetrators", the report said.
The report noted the two church leaders provided survivors with pastoral care and faced a considerable backlash over their actions.
Church leaders only protecting themselves
A major systemic issue identified by the report was the leadership focus on protecting the reputation of the church and its powerful and influential members.
"Abusive and predatory sexual relationships were misrepresented as consensual homosexual relationships," it said.
Conflicts of interest relating to the diocese's former legal team and accused priests were also identified.
"There was a lack of awareness of, or policies on, avoiding conflicts of interest in responding to child sexual abuse matters," the report said. "Conflicts of interests often involved lawyers who held positions in the diocese and acted as legal representatives for those charged with child sex offences."
The commission found that there were decades of cover-ups of child sexual abuse.
"Those who reported allegations of child sexual abuse to senior clergy were treated as if they had fabricated the allegations and were sometimes threatened with legal action," the report said.
"The cumulative effect of a number of systemic issues allowed a group of perpetrators to operate within the diocese for at least 30 years."
Marist Brother to stand trial on child sex abuse charges
A MARIST Brother who formerly worked at St Patrick’s College in Sale will face Melbourne County Court in May 2019 over charges related to a series of alleged historical sex offences.
Some of the alleged victims were aged under 14, the alleged offences occurring in Sale and neighbouring towns between 1971 and 1977.
There were initially 103 charges against the now 90-year-old man.
Fitzpatrick appeared at Melbourne Magistrates’ Court for an initial hearing between November 13 and 28, and has pleaded not guilty to the charges.
The case is the result of investigations by the SANO Task Force.
The task force was established to investigate historic and new allegations that have emanated from the Victorian Parliamentary Inquiry into child sex abuse involving religious and non-government organisations.
The task force also co-ordinates investigations emerging from the Australian Government Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.
People with information about child sexual abuse in an institutional context can email the SANO Task Force at sanotaskforce@police.vic.gov.au or phone 1800 110 007.
To report a child at immediate risk or danger, phone 000 or a local police station.
For more information about the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, visit the website, www.childabuseroyalcommission.gov.au.
Survivors & Mates Support Network (SAMSN) is a not-for-profit organisation working to increase public awareness of the effects that childhood sexual abuse can have on men in their adult lives.
For more information about SAMSN, visit www.samsn.org.au, which also has links to other related organisations.
Man's jail upped for live stream sex abuse
A Sydney man who directed the live sexual abuse of overseas children via an online video stream has had his minimum six-year jail term increased to 10 years.
After a crown appeal against the inadequacy of the sentence, two judges of the NSW Court of Criminal Appeal ruled the non-parole period should be 10 years while the third judge proposed 13 years.
Good attitude! Well done. Raping a child by remote control is really not much better than doing it in person.
UK Child sex abuse inquiry:
Priest 'tried to control' investigation
Allegations of sex abuse at Ampleforth College in North Yorkshire are being probed by the independent child sex abuse inquiry
Police raised concerns that the head of a Roman Catholic boarding school tried to "control" a child sex abuse investigation, an inquiry has heard.
A former North Yorkshire detective said officers were "excluded" from inquiries at Ampleforth College in 1995 and 2002.
But former head teacher Father Leo Chamberlain denied influencing a boy's parents during a phone call in 1995. He told the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse there had been "no skulduggery".
The Catholic Church is one of 13 public organisations being scrutinised by the inquiry, which is being headed by Prof Alexis Jay.
Det Supt Barry Honeysett said he had told Fr Chamberlain in 2003 that he did not trust the private school, because alleged victims of abuse had been spoken to by staff before police were called in.
Mr Honeysett, who led an inquiry into abuse at Ampleforth College, said: "The issue was largely around the delay in the police becoming involved. "A direct approach had been made to the victim which I felt was inappropriate."
Earlier in the hearing, the priest was questioned about another policy officer, Det Sgt Hartnett, who was involved investigating allegations at Ampleforth.
Lead counsel to the inquiry Riel Karmy-Jones put it to Fr Chamberlain that Det Sgt Hartnett believed the priest was trying to "control the investigation".
Fr Chamberlain, who began working at the school in 1961, said the suggestion was "completely subjective". He said he had spoken to the boy's parents to inform them of the situation and in doing so, had "made no obstruction" to the police inquiry.
Father Leo Chamberlain taught at
Ampleforth College from 1961 to 2003
Evidence was heard that the Abbott of Ampleforth, Fr Timothy Wright, went to visit a complainant of child sex abuse, causing mistrust between the Church and North Yorkshire Police.
Speaking via video link, Fr Chamberlain - head teacher at Ampleforth between 1992 and 2003 - said police thought there was a conspiracy between him and Fr Wright "to close the matter down", which he said was not the case.
Fr Chamberlain told the inquiry that during the 1980s, a teacher who had abused pupils would "be got rid of and it was thought wrongly that to keep it all very quiet was in the best interests of the victim".
An earlier hearing was told the former head teacher was warned about employing Fr Piers Grant-Ferris - who was later jailed for abusing boys. Grant-Ferris, who the pupils had nicknamed "Pervy Piers", was convicted of 20 counts of indecent assault in 2006.
The inquiry was shown a letter by a psychologist employed by the school, Elizabeth Mann, who wrote in 2003 that Grant-Ferris and a second monk posed a risk to pupils.
At the time, Fr Chamberlain said he thought it was safe to employ Grant-Ferris in the abbey's shop, which he had described as "something of a goldfish bowl", regularly visited by guests and students. He told the inquiry: "Because it was a very visible place I thought well, we could probably make it work. But I think I could have been wrong about that."
British police arrested 188 people for online child sex abuse in a single week
Kieran Corcoran
British police officers arrested 188 people in a single week over allegations of online child sex abuse — and say that livestreaming platforms are becoming the platform of choice for sex offenders.
Officers reported the spike in arrests after a week of "intensification" which saw forces across the UK swoop on suspects they had been monitoring.
Around 65 of the cases were related to exceptionally serious offences, according to Britain's National Crime Agency (NCA), including many which saw child abuse livestreamed over the internet to an audience of other abusers.
18 of the suspects were descried as being in a "position of trust", including one teacher, three medical workers, two charity volunteers and four people involved in law enforcement, government, and the armed forces.
NCA research, cited in a press release, suggests that offenders "are capitalising on the immediacy of contact that live streaming offers, as well as the ability to target children with a large number of comments in real time.
"Once on these platforms, offenders often use tricks or dares, the offer of online gifts or 'game points' and threats, in an attempt to manipulate young people into performing acts involving nudity over webcam."
Police did not mention any particular platforms by name. However, they called for internet companies to do more to stop sex abusers using online platforms to commit crimes.
Simon Bailey, the chief constable of Norfolk Police and the UK's top child protection officer, said: "We will keep working together, adapting our approach so that nowhere online is safe for people out to groom children or view them being abused.
"But we also need help. We need internet companies to help us stop access to sexual abuse images and videos and prevent abuse happening on their platforms. We need parents and carers to talk to their children about healthy relationships and staying safe online."
Zoe Hilton, a child protection expert at the NCA, said that sex abusers study children's online behaviour and adapt their strategies to find new ways to interact with children without their parents knowing.
She said: "We know that as children’s online habits change, offenders are adapting with them. These individuals are learning how young people communicate online and are using this knowledge to contact, befriend and abuse them."
The NCA released a new website, called Thinkuknow, with advice aimed at children and parents to help them recognise and disrupt child sex offenders online.
Grooming gang convictions '84% Asian', say researchers
The Quilliam Foundation finds there is a demographic link to those who sexually exploit children in grooming gangs.
By Sally Lockwood, North of England Correspondent
British-Pakistani researchers have found that 84% of all people convicted since 2005 for the specific crime of gang grooming were Asian.
The Quilliam Foundation found that the demographic background of those who exploit youngsters in a paedophile ring was different to those who act in grooming gangs.
According to the most recent figures, released in 2012 by the National Crime Agency's Child Exploitation and Online Protection Command (CEOP), 100% of child sex offenders in paedophile rings were white.
The report says CEOP, an official government body, identifies two types of group-based child sexual exploitation offenders.
Rochdale, UK
CEOP found that 75% of Type 1 offenders were of Asian ethnicity, whereas 100% of Type 2 offenders were white.
In a number of cities across the UK, gangs of predominantly British Pakistani men have been convicted for targeting vulnerable white young women and girls.
Questions have been raised about the connections between ethnicity and the offenders, and two British-Pakistani researchers from the Quilliam Foundation have said that the link is important.
The Foundation, a think-tank which usually focuses on extremism, has chosen to add its voice to the debate with what it describes as an evidence-based view.
Quilliam's researchers found 264 people have been convicted for the specific crime of gang grooming since 2005, and of those offenders 222 or 84% were Asian.
The report's co-author, Haras Rafiq, spoke to Sky News from his home in Rochdale, one town where members of a sex ring of predominantly British-Pakistani men were jailed for child sexual abuse in 2012.
"I'm from the heart of where one of the biggest high profile cases have happened over the last few years, and I'm saying it's very important that we do talk about it because the problem won't go away," he said.
"We didn't want there to be a pattern of people from our ethnic demographic carrying out these attacks. But unfortunately we were proven wrong."
The convictions of 17 men and one woman in Newcastle in August changed the debate after a judge said the grooming was not racially motivated
High profile cases like Rochdale have generated negative headlines about the Asian community.
The most recent case in Newcastle changed the debate after 17 men and one woman were convicted of nearly 100 offences, and the judge said the grooming wasn't racially motivated.
It's just a coincidence that all but one are Pakistanis and all the victims are young white girls! It's also a coincidence for the other 205 Pakistanis who have been convicted of raping young white British girls.
Following the judgment, Mike Penning MP wrote to the Attorney General calling for a review.
Nazir Afzal, who is credited with tackling the issue during his time as Chief Crown Prosecutor in the North West, warned the issue of 'Asian' grooming gangs is being used as a recruitment tool by the far-right.
Mr Afzal also warned gang grooming was not the most common form of child sexual abuse.
"British white men they tend to work individually. They tend to work online where they groom and they are the majority of perpetrators. When it comes to Asian men or Pakistani men they tend to do it in groups," Mr Afzal said.
Most senior Catholic priest to be convicted of sex crimes in the UK found guilty on 19 charges
By Oliver Harvey, Chief Feature Writer
Led to his office on trumped- up misdemeanors, schoolboys blanched in horror at the sight of the “sadistic” monk’s cat-o’-nine-tails whip, canes and a leather strap.
Outwardly pious, Soper “cunningly” used corporal punishment as an excuse to pull down the boys’ trousers and sexually abuse them.
He even hoisted up his priestly robes to rape a 12-year-old boy over his desk at West London’s £5,368-a-term St Benedict’s School — then run by monks from Ealing Abbey.
Justice finally caught up with Andrew Soper, 74, formerly Father Laurence Soper, last week.
He was found guilty of 19 charges of indecent assault and serious sexual assaults involving ten boys in the ’70s and ’80s. The perverted priest will be sentenced next Tuesday. He will likely die behind bars.
St Benedict's Junior School in Ealing, West London, has been the subject of one of the country's largest Catholic Church sex abuse scandals
But the case is a hollow victory for Soper’s victims, whose lives have been destroyed by their abuser.
One traumatised man told The Sun: “He’s a cruel bastard. He touched my backside when I was 11 then caned me weekly for two years. He got a sexual thrill out of it.
“We were made to feel responsible for what was happening to us.”
Depraved Soper is thought to be the most senior Catholic priest to be convicted of sex crimes in the UK.
After allegations of abuse from another institution surfaced in 2000, the Church transferred Soper to Italy, where he spent the next decade
Soper’s conviction is the latest shocking chapter in the worldwide clergy abuse scandal that stretches all the way to the Vatican itself.
Thousands of victims in a dozen countries have spoken out about priests molesting children as the church hierarchy turned a blind eye.
As Abbot of Ealing Abbey, he was one of the most powerful figures in the Benedictine order.
In 2000, after allegations were made about his conduct as the visiting Chaplain of Feltham Young Offenders Institution, he transferred to Rome to be bursar at S’Anselmo, the Vatican’s Benedictine University.
A spokesman for Ealing Abbey’s Abbot told The Sun: “When the allegations were made it was decided the safest option was to keep him in that role at the university in Rome.
“Restrictions were placed on him to ensure he did not come into contact with children.”
But the net was closing in. Soper was questioned several times by police but allowed to return to Rome on bail. In March 2011, fearing he would be charged, he fled to Kosovo, where he remained hidden for five and a half years before his arrest.
Last night a victims’ group slammed the Vatican for not doing enough to “root out abusers”.
David Greenwood, an executive member of Minister & Clergy Sexual Abuse Survivors, said: “The Catholic Church has helped to harbour abusers and has helped them evade justice.”
In October, Pope Francis himself conceded that the church had “arrived late” to the crisis. Only in 2011 did the Vatican order a top-level inquiry into abuse at St Benedict’s.
That scandal is one of the most serious to engulf the Catholic Church in Britain.
The school was accused during Soper’s Old Bailey trial of a “serial cover-up” of his abuse between 1975 and 1983.
A former bank worker, Soper joined the Ealing Abbey monastery in 1964 and taught at St Benedict’s from 1973, first as a maths teacher, then as head master of the middle school and as bursar.
One ex-pupil says he never saw “tall and stern” Soper “smile once”.
Shockingly, he is the FIFTH master convicted of sexual offences involving children at St Benedict’s.
One ten-year-old victim had tried to hang himself from a stairwell after being fondled by the master.
Police had investigated Pearce in 2001 and again in 2004 but no charges were brought. Then, in 2006, one of his victims sued Pearce and the school in the High Court, and was awarded £43,000.
Yet Pearce remained a priest and remained at Ealing Abbey. He continued to groom and assault young boys until his arrest in January 2008.
One victim said: “This man made me think I was a bad person for 30 years. I thought about him every day, wanted to kill him every day.”
Another abuser was lay teacher and “master of discipline” John Maestri, 78, who was jailed after admitting three indecent assaults against children in the 1970s and 1980s. He made one 11-year-old sit on his lap, kissed and fondled him and told him he “loved” him. The victim recalled: “So my first kiss wasn’t with a pretty girl, like everyone else, it was with some old man.”
Another victim, subjected to frequent beatings by Maestri and a monk who cannot be named for legal reasons, said: “It was sexual abuse that masqueraded as discipline.
“He beat me for fun. I can’t put it down to anything more than his personal entertainment. It has hung around my neck for decades. It has ruined my life.
“Even now I have a ritual when I’m going to bed. I have a GPMG — general purpose machine gun — and imagine that I’m lining up the sights on the monk’s bedroom window. “That’s the only way I can get to sleep. Every night.”
John Maestri, a layman and former teacher at St Benedict’s, was found guilty on three charges of indecently assaulting children in the ’70s and ’80s
Another pupil who was at St Benedict’s in the 1960s spoke of how he was abused by Father Kevin Horsey, head of the middle school.
Horsey, who died in 2006, would invite boys to sit next to him in PE and fondle them.
The ex-pupil says: “When I left I put the floggings, the sexual abuse, the mental abuse to one side. But it never quite leaves you.
“It was an amoral and perverted place. Everybody sort of knew it was going on but did nothing. I’m angry with the parents who didn’t listen, and angry with the hierarchy of the Catholic Church who let it happen.”
In 2011 a court heard St Benedict’s dealt with a complaint about a sexual assault by teacher Stephen Skelton, 69, by writing him a good reference and asking him to “go quietly”. Ten years on, Skelton was found guilty of two indecent assaults on another boy.
In May 2016, deputy head Peter Allott, 38, was jailed for 33 months after admitting he was addicted to child pornography, even keeping some on a hard drive in his office.
Today St Benedict’s is an elite co-ed school that promotes “the Christian values of integrity, fairness and generosity”. It is no longer governed by Ealing Abbey’s monks and was found to be fully compliant in child protection following two recent inspections by the Independent Schools Inspectorate.
High-flying old boys include comedian Julian Clary, Star Wars actor Andy Serkis and Tory grandee Lord Patten. There is no suggestion they were caught up in the abuse scandal.
Ealing, UK
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