ALTONA Meadows woman Mairead Ashcroft remains angry at the lack of support given when she first told members of the clergy about her sexual abuse as a child.
Ms Ashcroft (pictured), who says she was abused by a priest from the ages of 8 to 11, last Friday told Victoria’s inquiry into child sex abuse that she was initially advised not to speak of her ordeal.
She first told her parents in 1983 at age 19, Ms Ashcroft told the inquiry.
“The next time that I spoke of the abuse was on 18th May 1999 to the sister . . . I was told not to speak about the abuse to anyone as I might cause someone distress.”
Victoria Police is seeking to extradite Ms Ashcroft’s alleged abuser, Brother Bernard Hartman, from the US.
Three other people have contacted police, alleging the 73-year-old Marianist priest raped them as children or teenagers in the 1970s.
Ms Ashcroft said she was assessed by Sister Angela Ryan from the Catholic Church’s Towards Healing program “to work out if I was telling the truth”.
Ms Ashcroft told the inquiry that in a letter dated November 3, 1999, Brother Hartman apologised for the hurt he had caused.
In 2002, Ms Ashcroft reported the abuse to police, but by this time Brother Hartman was overseas.
Ms Ashcroft has been diagnosed with severe complex post traumatic stress disorder, stemming back to her childhood abuse.
She told the inquiry that on December 11, 2011, Vicar General Bishop Les Tomlinson stated: “The Archdiocese and the Catholic Education Office have checked their records and . . . there is no record of any complaint of abuse having been received.”
Ms Ashcroft said: “Since that time I have been informed that the Marianists have hindered the case and been unco-operative to the point of recently [in] August/September of this year putting Hartman into hiding.”
