The children of priests searching for their fathers | Compass

Brendan and Damien were brought up by a loving and devout Catholic couple in Richmond Melbourne it was an idyllic childhood Roy and bet Watkins adopted Damien in 1959 and Brendan in 1961. Brendan started to realize his adoption was unorthodox when he turned 29 and decided to find out about his biological parents I was born in a private Hospital which is really unusual people weren't born in private hospitals who paid for it [Music] 1990 Brendan and his partner Kate were Keen to have children so they wanted to know about his genetic history the first step was to obtain his original birth certificate it was here at the Catholic Family welfare Bureau in Melbourne that Brendan had his first meeting with a social worker to find out the names of his biological parents it was not what he expected I was hoping that the birth certificate would have both parents names it just had my mother's I went along expecting the stereotypical solution to those early questions that it was a young girl 16 17 18 got pregnant Catholic adopted into the Catholic Community but it wasn't it was different my mother was 27 that was much older than other stories I'd read about she was from South Australia or another state [Music] the worker to contact his Bible something she wasn't Keen to do she was foreboding she was quite fierce and unsentimental and these Notions of feeling ungrateful was sort of reinforced by her a few weeks later the social worker called Brendan and she said she spoken to my mother and I was optimistic thinking that's fabulous when do we meet when do we get together was she happy to hear from me and it was the opposite and I was told that I wouldn't make my mother I wouldn't talk to her it would never happen and very directly told to go home and forget about her forever it's the most wounding impactful trauma of my life I've only just realized that a year later Brendan did eventually find his mother Maggie not her real name her name was in the phone book he enlisted Kate his partner to call one of her relatives and Kate rang and said are you sitting down I found your mother she's a nun but it went some way to explain why she didn't want contact why we'd never meet why we'd never talk and from that day on I you know I pictured my mother in a nun's habit in a convent walking silently through churches and had that image for years and years and years and it gave me some peace dejected each year he marks his calendar to remind himself to check the death notices to see if his biological mother Maggie is still alive eventually Maggie allowed contact through letters in a short visit but still Brendan did not have a name for his biological father What followed was essentially 30 years of different stories my father was dead or she didn't know what happened to my father and after 15 18 years of first making contact she said to me I told you your father's name and she gave me a name Paul Hayes and so the first thing I did was go and hire a private detective the private detective delivered his report the name is invented and I wrote back to my mother and I told her that and she wrote back and said well I was dumped and so were you and she was right it was over the chase was over and so um around 2010 I raised the white flag and gave up it was over there was no way I could find my father five years later Brendan decided to send his DNA sample to ancestry.com.au one day an email arrived that showed Sydney was the location of many of his biological relatives with four men as likely candidates for his father the fourth was quickly discounted because he was a lot older than my mother he was 30 years older and we ruled him out because he was a he was a Catholic priest so it couldn't be a Catholic priest could it but incredibly Maggie confirmed that his father was indeed a priest father Vincent Shield had moved her from South Australia to his brother's home in another state when she was 18 years old Maggie entered a Convent soon after Brendan was born she did 25 years Service as a nun to pay her debt and pretty much a year or so after she left the convent I first made contact [Music] she was living with my father they were living under the same roof but of course she was living with a priest in 2020 Brendan came here to McKillip Family Services to retrieve his adoption file but no records could be found the archivist told him this was very unusual he had to appeal to the Victorian Department of Justice you've got your file which is here what was missing from it it was still very incomplete so my birth records hospital records were gone my baptism certificate I still don't know if I was ever baptized a lot of documentation was gone but what really hurt was to find my the the interview notes of my birth mother I found that she was traumatized by my adoption and that's the opposite of what I was told at the time I was told she was a Stern determined woman and that she prayed for me every day and that there'd be no contact so for years you thought your mother didn't want to see you when she was cold-hearted that's cruel isn't it it is cruel it's immoral and I can't believe that the church did it [Music] advocacy body for adopted persons in Victoria this has been a an ongoing theme within this space records have been known to fall off the back of a truck or be destroyed in fires we have quite a few adoptees over the years who have found no paper trail and it's so important for them to get recognition and acknowledgment for the fact that these practices went on it's really important to shine a light on them for the last three years Brendan has been writing a book about his adoption Journey he's about to make another trip to South Australia to find out more about his priest father Vincent shield and what went on in that vast remote diocese thank you [Music] morning breaks over the Spencer Gulf at Port Augusta in South Australia it's here at this former Catholic High School that Maggie first met father Sheil Brendan has asked his cousin Bill to come on the road trip with him [Music] how are you Brendan great to see you so this is where you grew up the family yeah yeah just over here the White House there I spent a lot of my childhood there until I left to uh to move away yeah my mother Maggie was here my recollection in the letters that he wrote he was instructed to come to Port Augusta to exert his great renowned Zeal to get to know the young people of Port Augusta she was 14 or 15. he was 30 years older and when my mother turned 18 he arranged for her to go and live with the shields I knew and I'd been told that they were how can I put it she was caring for him when he got older so that was my understanding of the the arrangement but um housekeeping housekeeper extraordinaire in short hand yeah [Music] father Vincent Shield had an adventurous life after training in Ireland he first came to south Australia in 1943. his diocese during the 40s 50s 60s and 70s was a vast area from Inland desert to coastal towns strange man that was his father Ben Sheil my father a man that I'll never know somebody that died in 19 93 at 90 years of age I've got these amazing photos of him just before he died they celebrated his 50th anniversary in the church [Music] Brendan and Bill drive through the Flinders ranges stopping on the way to look at some of the old churches [Music] they are headed to whyalla on the air Peninsula to find out about another Secret [Music] well Brent and I brought you to the waiala hospital this is where my Uncle Terry started his life born here to a young girl and he was picked up I believe from the story I've been told and and flown to Sydney and to to Father Ben's family over there to be I guess unofficially adopted yeah Terry was here for 10 days and taken away and part of him as I think a lot of the priests did in those days certainly I've had many stories of it arranging these adoptions sometimes with paperwork sometimes without it all became a bit foggy baby Terry that was left at whyalla hospital and adopted into father Shields family in Sydney is now 72 years old and lives in Perth Terry and Bill Shield grew up together in Sydney at the priest Brothers house hi Terry how are you Billy how you doing Brendan how are you good day Terry it took Terry many years to find and meet his biological mother she was a 16 year old girl living on a pastoral station near whyalla when she fell pregnant to a local worker she was brought down to whyalla to give birth to me and that was as much as I've ever been able to find out until I met yourself of course and I started thinking was there more to this story than what I've been told so the local doctor said I've got a child here oh really uh that I I didn't know that Brendan I didn't know that that was part of it yeah I've been told that I didn't know much about the adoption how it happened or anything like that yeah and and my father father Ben arranged for your adoption and your transporting to to Bill Shield over in Sydney and it was a big family already Terry wasn't it it was and I tried to understand why he would have got his brother to adopt me when they'd already had nine kids of their own and Mum and Dad weren't well they've been mum particularly she'd been ill for quite some time prior to that dad had a lot of heart problems later in life when I say later he was only 66 when he passed away but he had heart attack prior about a week before and he was still recovering from that and was sitting down reading the Sunday paper and he just put the paper down and he just said to me he said Terry he said Just remember you're my son and you always will be father Shield swore his entire family to secrecy so Terry only found out he was adopted in his 30s when he applied for his birth certificate he was living up the Blue Mountains at the time and went up there and I said to him I said I found out I've adopted I said can you help me out I'm trying to track down my birth mother and he sort of shook his head and said oh look he said so long ago he said they're probably all dead anyway that was his answer but Terry's biological mother wasn't dead father Sheil had told a lie yeah I think it's something that should have been brought out in the open a long long time ago and and why they just keep covering things up and and not admitting to what what went on I don't know I mean what are they afraid of because everybody has a right to know where they come from I think and what what their background is [Music] born now a well-preserved tourist town was father Vincent Shield's last Parish before he moved to another state to live with Maggie he saw himself as a real lovable Rogue yeah although my wife didn't like him I always wanted him to marry us and we had quite a chat and I said bill is it just a word of warning he said don't let her go on the pill he said when they go on the pill they tend to wander bill you knew father seems from Brendan's story he had a huge sense of entitlement as a priest that he could tell people what to do he could control people I think it's an abusive power and he was certainly controlling of me in several ways and I resented it at the end of the day is that you know taking taken to the extreme extension of the authority they had it's a spiritual abuse you know the priests are the hands and feet of God on Earth it's very hard to say no to a priest and particularly for somebody like them you know he was in the second largest diocese on planet Earth apparently they can do whatever they like it's unchecked the control is unquestioned how do you feel about the fact that your mother was denied even talking about the fact she'd had a child and Vin said to her you're not allowed to tell anyone about you how do you sit with that you know I think the greatest cost is on controlling the mothers The Women Within the Catholic faith and it denies them equality and it denies them a voice and it then extends through their offspring you know they're kept from their tribe Brendan's mother's story is not unique her journey has been lived by thousands of women around the world Michelle not her real name came from a dysfunctional family where violence was the norm you first met a priest as she was finishing her last year of school in 1967. he was 12 years older than her he paid me very special attention and you know showed that kind of interest in me that that a father would do but my father didn't and I was very taken with with that kind of attention the priest told her to keep their sexual activity a secret I knew that it was not supposed to be happening because he was a priest but he reassured me that if people loved each other then that was all right which was quite confusing because I had been taught otherwise but the other thing was that he he was the person in my life who had the most Authority Michelle was 18 when she felt pregnant the priest asked her to come to a meeting with two other priests she was shocked by what happened next one of them said to me that he had a mate in the city who did abortions and had actually performed an abortion for a girlfriend of his I was I was shocked first of all I was absolutely shocked I was very ignorant about abortion this was in the 60s and all I knew about it was I knew that it was illegal I knew that it was dangerous so it was just a terrifying time altogether and the offer of abortion was a part of that atmosphere of Terror later one of the priests sexually assaulted her he drove me to the motel and and he kissed me in the car and blamed me and said that I had kissed him but I knew I hadn't but I was I was in a State of Shock and confusion he was a priest who had a lot of authority he had quite a high position in the church and he followed me to my motel room and refused to leave and he raped me raped me Michelle refused to have an abortion and also decided to keep her baby despite the immense pressure to adopt it what had to happen at all costs was that his reputation and identity as the father of my child were protected and the church was protected those were the Paramount considerations [Music] has finished a major research project on reproductive abuse by priests a former nun now a senior academic at the Goethe University [Music] I don't know how many many patrons thousands of pages I looked at all kinds of documents from survivor's accounts to court documents to newspaper articles to Grand Theory reports so I found the first abortion case involving a 13 year old girl and I found cases with girls even younger than that you know 11 year olds who had become pregnant as a result of sexual abuse by a priest something that typically happened was that they would be put under pressure to a board and I was amazed at how many victims did not want to abort actually you know they did what not want to give in to this pressure they wanted the baby are these cases you're talking about all many many decades ago are we talking that this is happening now or in modern history many of the victims that I have looked at they're my age so even if I had perpended them as children or teenagers it's not long ago and I actually think we can assume that this is still going on because none of the contributing factors has been erased the clerical power of priests mandatory celibacy that often works as a perfect excuse and cover for Reproductive abuse all of that is still fully in place and no major research has gone into reproductive abuse so there is still lots to be done and Richard sip the academics done his own work saying only 50 of priests are actually celibate so are we talking we're talking hundreds of children around the world thousands no we are definitely talking hundreds of thousands of children affected by reproductive abuse at the heart of the issue for Dr reasoninger is mandatory celibacy it's obvious that this is a very dangerous topic for the Catholic church because it puts so much into question that is essential for the functioning of the power structure of the Catholic Church [Music] me it says so much about the misogyny of the Catholic church I did the institution it's a it's a male Centric institution that doesn't recognize the rights of women [Music] Brendan has returned to Melbourne to meet another child of a priest Linda Kelly Lawless Linda's father the priest father Joe Kelly used to come to this Chapel to give Mass to the unwed mothers next door who were waiting to have their babies and adopt them out he would help support them through the system and while he was doing this though my father was actually having an affair with my mother he was moved from here I believe he was sent to Hillsville because of the affair with my mother yeah again it's all this pattern isn't it Church pattern something goes wrong the priest has moved on and the women are left holding the baby literally literally Linda's mother did not go ahead with her adoption my paperwork was never finished and I just seemed to vanish from this hospital all my paperwork has baby for adoption false names I can't find any baptism records Linda Kelly Lawless is seeking official recognition from the Catholic church that she is the daughter of Father Joseph Kelly Linda's mother never told her who her father was but a friend of her mother's dead over the last five years Linda has presented Archbishop common solely with a statement from this friend a report from a genealogist and witnessed statements from her aunts I have presented the Archbishop with an affidavit from my aunt another affidavit from another aunt another affidavit from another aunt a SAT declaration from a friend of my mother's and I also sent in a DNA report that was done by for my Heritage and ancestry and the findings with that that there was only one person who could bear my father and that was Father Joseph Kelly I had legal DNA testing with parabon in America and a cousin from my grandfather's side and a cousin from my grandmother's side stepped forward we did legal DNA testing and the results came back that I was 99 related to both of them and my father is an only child and I presented that to the Archbishop of Melbourne [Music] parabon DNA testing is used by the FBI in the U.S and by Queensland police in criminal and missing persons cases but Archbishop Komen Solly wrote back to Linda saying whilst he believed her formal recognition would need to come from the state not the church and that exumation may be the only way to achieve this although I do not have the authority to request an exclamation of Father Joseph Kelly if it is to be sought it would need to come from you I would be prepared to support such an application from yourself I have to exhume him to prove to him that he is my father a scientific DNA evidence apparently isn't enough have you asked for legal compensation no no I haven't I've asked for a letter of recognition that they acknowledge that he is my father I asked for some support to sort out my birth certificate which they have helped me with I asked for an apology for my mother thank you in a statement to Compass Archbishop common solely States the Archdiocese of Melbourne has supported Linda and have offered financial support there is no denying the historical fact that priests have fathered children the church now steps forward in finding ways to acknowledge children who have priests as their father I cannot State categorically that Father Kelly is her biological father there is simply not the level of information to do so at this point in time regardless of the above I have shared with Linda in writing that I believe that Father Kelly is her biological father thank you hi Susie how are you good hi Linda so this is The Headstone you had made for your father yes it is the parish priest from this local area in the private Catholic Cemetery they had no problem with you putting your name no none at all why is it important for you but Archbishop comes out to apologize and to recognize you're the daughter of Father Joseph William Kelly it the right thing to do it's acknowledging that I existed and I'm not hidden anymore and I don't think it's too much to ask the peak adoption advocacy group in Victoria says it's time for a public and independent inquiry it's clearly the case that he's the father so they there should be some power to force the church to accept that responsibility it would be beneficial for the victims and survivors of these practices if there were formal inquiry into what happened and how many children are actually children of priests and to you know provide them with some sort of Justice thanks to DNA and the tenacity of people like Brendan and Linda Kelly Lawless the hidden children of priests are finally being heard but Brendan wants a full Federal inquiry to bring Justice and compensation into these children and their silenced mothers the church has made the children of priests they have an obligation they're the wealthiest institution on planet Earth they can afford it they need to fund support to Children of priests [Music] [Music] thank you

Channel: ABC News In-depth

Views: 1,278,409

Keywords: abc news, australian news, abc news indepth, documentaries, long-form journalism, catholic church, children of priests, children of nuns

Id: JFI0cwCklx4

Length: 28min 22sec (1702 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 17 2023