Sexual Abuse Survivor - Catholic Church Apologises To Boy Raped by Priest

3/13/2019 Sexual abuse survivor: Catholic Church apologises to boy raped by priest
Sexual abuse survivor fought for 15

years to get justice
As an 11-year-old, Mark Fabbro was brutally sexually assaulted by a sadistic
Jesuit priest. It became a rapid downfall for the young boy.
Rebecca Franks @MrsBecFranks MARCH 6, 2019 2:57PM
Video Image
George Pell: A History of Denial
Mark Fabbro was brutally sexually assaulted by a twisted paedophile priest at

Melbourne’s prestigious Xavier College aged just 11 years old. The violent and
horrific experience left him humiliated, disgusted, ashamed and really, really angry.
“At school ... I became a choirboy, I looked up to the divinity and Christianity and
the belief system very avidly,” he tells news.com.au.
That was until the day his innocence was stripped away from him in a sadistic attack
in 1971 on the grounds of Xavier College’s preparatory school Burke Hall in a small
room behind the Jesuit priest Father John Byrne’s office.
“I became very rebellious, very angry,” Mark says. “At school I was what you would
call the class clown or the ‘village idiot’ because I didn’t want to be taken seriously,
due to the seriousness of what happened.”
https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/real-life/news-life/sexual-abuse-survivor-sadistically-raped-by-a-priest-as-an-alter-boy-fought-for-15-years-to-g… 1/10
Mark Fabbro fought for 15 years to get an apology and compensation from the Catholic Church after he was brutally
sexually assaulted aged 11. Source:Supplied
Soon after, Mark was sent to St Ignatius College Riverview, an exclusive Catholic
boarding school on Sydney’s lower North Shore which includes former prime
minister Tony Abbott and former deputy PM Barnaby Joyce as alumni.
Last year, Brother Victor Thomas Higgs, 81, was convicted of abusing six boys aged
12 in the 1970s and ’80s while a teacher at St Ignatius. The court heard the former
Jesuit priest would summon his victims to private locations where he ordered them to
undress and would molest them, progressing to sexual penetration on some of the
boys.
According to Broken Rites Australia, an organisation set up to help people hurt by
the Catholic Church’s sex abuse crimes, Higgs had been transferred to the Sydney
school from St Ignatius College in Adelaide — where he had sexually abused boys
— and later to Xavier College in Melbourne as boarding house supervisor.
He was jailed for at least seven and a half years in November last year.
Like many others who had been molested as children, Mark, an advocate for victims
of sexual abuse by priests, suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder as a direct
result of his sexual abuse at Xavier College.
“By 18, I’d been expelled by two schools, thrown out of two pubs and thrown out of
home,” he tells news.com.au. “I was extremely angry and self-destructive. I could
not look people in the eyes. I had so much guilt.
“I was humiliated by what had happened … the abuse. I was a bit of a mess.
“They (priests) say, ‘If you do not do the right thing by people and the Church, you
are going to hell’. They twist the children’s minds. I remember having this image of
hell, like a black soul. It’s a guilt trip.”
With his life completely ripped apart, Mark became demoralised and lacked all self-
worth so he decided to hitchhike around Australia for a number of years.
Victor Higgs, 81, was jailed for repeatedly indecently assaulting six teenage boys at St Ignatius College Riverview in
Sydney between 1972 and 1980. Source: NineNews Source:Channel 9
By 1996, Mark was ready to get some answers, some recognition and justice from
the Catholic Church — the institution he blamed for destroying his childhood and
teenage years.
He was one of the first people in Australia to contact the Melbourne Response — an
organisation established to give support and compensation to victims of sexual abuse
by Catholic priests — shortly after it was set up by Cardinal George Pell, now
himself a convicted paedophile.
Shortly after setting up the Melbourne Response, Pell went on to sexually assault
two altar boys in the city’s St Patrick’s Cathedral after a solemn Mass in December
1996, crimes for which he is now languishing in a suicide-proof prison cell awaiting
sentencing in March.
Pell’s legal team has lodged an appeal to his conviction.
This twisted irony is not lost on Mark, who says the organisation should be
immediately dismantled — views echoed by Chrissie Foster whose two daughters
Emma and Katie were raped by Melbourne priest Kevin O’Donnell, totally
destroying their lives.
Emma became addicted to drugs, had eating disorders and self-harmed before
overdosing on medication at 26. Katie was hit by a car after a drinking binge in
1999, leaving her brain damaged. Their late father Anthony, a campaigner against
sexual abuse, fought for years to get justice for his daughters.
After news of Pell’s conviction became public this week, Archbishop of Melbourne
Peter Comensoli admitted to ABC Melbourne the Church had engaged in cover ups
and attempts to obstruct victims seeking redress and compensation.
During the interview, Archbishop Comensoli apologised to victims but refused to
immediately dismantle Melbourne Response, saying calls were still coming through
and he wished to keep its support arm, Carelink.
But Mark says victims of sex abuse by Catholic clergy should not touch Melbourne
Response with a “10-foot pole”. Instead, he urged them to contact police and Broken
Rites Australia.
Chrissy Foster has called for the Melbourne Response to be dismantled following George Pell’s conviction for child sex
crimes. Picture: Tony Gough Source:News Corp Australia
“I was one of the first survivors to actually approach the Melbourne Response in
1996, a couple of months after (it) was set up.” Mark tells news.com.au.
“I had battled with what happened to me for a very, very long time. I went to the
Church to seek an apology and recognition and acknowledgment of what happened
to me.
“I went to an office in Melbourne. I went to see the commissioner (Peter
O’Callaghan QC). That particular commissioner had explained to me a number of
things that caused me to be effectively dissuaded from pursuing the Church.
“He said I was unlikely to get an apology. I left feeling very demoralised, very
defeated. It was not a nice experience.”
The stigma of being branded a liar who no one would believe reinforced what was
instilled in Mark as a child, and he did not pursue the matter further for a few years.
However, eventually he decided to battle on and he again approached the Church,
determined to get justice.
He contacted the Melbourne Response a second time, speaking to Mr O’Callaghan,
who hit the headlines in August 2014 when he told the royal commission into
institutional responses to child sexual abuse that he had never reported sexual abuse
complaints against priests to the police.
“He said, ‘It will be hard to substantiate what happened to you’,” Mark told
news.com.au. “He more or less implied that no one would believe me, that I had a
whole lot of issues.”
Disgraced Cardinal George Pell arriving in court before he was jailed for child sex crimes. Picture: Con
Chronis/AFP Source:AFP
Complicating matters further, according to the Melbourne Response, was Mark being
abused by a priest who was part of the order of the Jesuits, and the abuse happened at
a school — this did not come under the remit of the Catholic Archdiocese of
Melbourne.
“He said they did not deal with complaints coming from an order,” Mark tells
news.com.au.
“This happened at Xavier College in Melbourne in the 1970s. At that time, the
Church knew there were paedophiles there (at the school), and they were left to do
what they wanted to do.
“There were many problems at that school. It was not a one-off, there was a lot of
abuse.”
Undeterred, Mark started compiling evidence. He dug out an old 1971 Xavier
College yearbook and found six boys who he recognised from his schooldays.
In 2005, Mark lodged a complain with the Catholic Church’s Professional Standards
Office (the PSO) in Sydney as part of Towards Healing Process to which he says the
reluctant Jesuits signed up to after pressure.
He was assigned a female lawyer who managed to track down four of the boys, one
who had also made a complaint against Fr Byrne, who died in 1974 aged 62 never
facing any penalty for his despicable crimes that damaged so many young lives.
“I looked through old school books with photos,” Mark said. “I picked out six names
of kids I remembered at the time. I gave them to her thinking, ‘These kids, adults
now, might be able to shed light on what happened to me’.
“She came back and amazingly said, ‘Your case has been substantiated’. And it was
accepted by the Jesuits. She had contacted these six people and managed to get
through to about four of them. One of them had put in a complaint themselves of
being abused at the school at the same time.”
It took Mark Fabbro 15 years to get an apology from the Catholic Church. Source:Supplied
On December 23, 2005, Father Geoffrey King, who was in charge of professional
standards for the Australian Jesuits, wrote to Mark, stating: “I must say that your
account of events at Burke Hall bears very much the ring of truth …
“It is certainly true that John Byrne was moved from Burke Hall during 1972, and
there seems good reason to suspect that it was as a result of some problematic
behaviour on his part.”
However, it wasn't until December 2011 that Mark finally received an apology and
compensation — four decades after the horrific attack and a long, drawn-out and
painful 15-year battle with the Catholic Church.
Two years later, Mark gave evidence to Victoria’s parliamentary inquiry into Child
Sexual Abuse which investigated Xavier College’s alleged past of institutionalised
brutalisation and sexual abuse of children in its care. At the time, the then principal
Dr Chris Hayes told the ABC that the school was a “very different place” back then.
In 2017, convicted paedophile Vili Kovac, a former teacher at Xavier College, was
jailed for four years for indecently assaulting a student in the 1960s, however, by
then many other teachers implicated in child sexual abuse — including Fr Byrne —
were dead.
For years, Mark campaigned for justice for survivors and was the Sydney area co-
leader of SNAP (Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests) offering support to
others which unsurprisingly took a toll on his mental health.
“I had phone calls in the middle of the night,” Mark tells news.com.au. “People who
were suicidal … Some had drug overdoses or alcohol destroyed their lives.
“There are so many people who have been abused who don’t talk about it. The real
statistics are a lot more than we know — in families and state-run institutions. But
the Church has a particular level of moral responsibility, moral and spiritual
guidance.
“They make excuses to downplay the damage within the Church that the Church has
done.
“The real situation will never be known, how many children were abused.”
Mark Fabbro campaigning on behalf of survivors of sexual abuse outside Melbourne’s St Patrick's Cathedral where
disgraced cardinal George Pell sexually assaulted two alter boys. Source:Supplied
Mark says the sad fact was that many paedophiles within the Church had now gone
overseas, working in so-called Third World communities in Fiji, South America and
Africa where child sexual abuse was still being brushed under the carpet.
“Since the arrest and news of the conviction of George Pell, there have been a lot of
inquiries from survivors,” he tells news.com.au.
“My advice to anyone (seeking redress) would be to not go near the Church with a
10-foot pole because on my personal experience in ’96 and the other reason — it was
obviously set up by Pell who is a convicted paedophile himself.
“The Melbourne Response, over the years of it operating, has been a system
particularly obstructive and limiting — not only the amount of reparations the
complainant can have and to deter complainants from going through the court system
— but to minimise any adverse publicity that might result for the Church.”
Instead, Mark advised survivors to contact the police and Broken Rites
Australia,which can offer support and advice.
“It’s bringing to light and bringing the truth of this abuse problem in the Catholic
Church,” Mark said.
On George Pell’s conviction, Mark said: “It was a shock. It was incredible to believe
that a paedophile could rise to such a high rank within the Church.
“It was also a shock because my immediate reaction was, ‘What are the implications
for Catholics and society generally?’
“A lot of powerbrokers in our society and a lot of the elite in our society identify as
being Catholic.
“Many of the judiciary, politicians — powerful members of our society, they really
need to do some soul-searching about what they can do with their belief system.”
— If you or a loved one needs help, please contact Lifeline on 13 11 14, if you have
been affected by abuse within the Catholic Church contact Broken Rites Australia on
(03) 9457 4999, if affected sexual assault, please call 1800 RESPECT (1800 737
732). In an emergency always call Triple-0.
Continue the conversation on Twitter @MrsBecFranks
https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/real-life/news-life/sexual-abuse-survivor-sadistically-raped-by-a-priest-as-an-alter-boy-fought-for-15-years-to-… 10/10

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3/13/2019 Sexual abuse survivor: Catholic Church apologises to boy raped by priest

Sexual abuse survivor fought for 15

Rebecca Franks @MrsBecFranks MARCH 6, 2019 2:57PM

George Pell: A History of Denial

Mark Fabbro was brutally sexually assaulted by a twisted paedophile priest at

Continue the conversation on Twitter @MrsBecFranks

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