
THERE have been few certainties in the complex and troubled world of John Hepworth. His childhood was seared by poverty, loneliness and aggression. From the age of seven, he says, he often fled this life for the comfort and absorption of prayer.
On his own admission, Hepworth, 67, was at times an arrogant and needlessly flamboyant young man who easily made enemies as he pursued his chosen path. These traits, he concedes, may have damaged him, too, fuelling a perceived vendetta that continues to this day.
But he was a man of God, he says, and he had a dream.
Hepworth duly joined the Anglican Church, and later the Traditional Anglican Communion, where he became Primate in 2002. The TAC, described as "Anglo Catholic", opposes the ordination of women and the move away from orthodoxy and feels more comfortable within the Catholic fold. Hepworth's decision to go public about the sexual abuse is directly related to the TAC's move to rejoin Rome. He says he wants it known why he left the Catholic Church in the first place.
Hepworth is the eldest of five children. His mother had been an army captain and served in the nursing corps in Jerusalem, and his father was a sergeant. Discipline was harsh. His father was remote to him. His mother demanded respect and obedience. She would hit him for no apparent reason, and he was afraid of her. He suffered severe panic attacks, lasting up to half an hour, from childhood into his young adult life. He was often sent to stay with his father's sisters, where life was "full of fighting and aggression'', according to an account given to the Catholic archdiocese of Melbourne.
The violence that started at home was to continue through primary school and all the way to the seminary, which he entered at 15. His first abuser, within a month of entering the seminary, was Father John Stockdale, to whom Hepworth was introduced by another seminarian. Stockdale abused Hepworth for years.
The fellow seminarian arranged for Hepworth to stay with Stockdale at his family home in Box Hill, where the sexual abuse and rape continued. He met the notorious paedophile Father Ronald Pickering at the Adelaide home of a member of the gay circle to which the priests belonged. Pickering quickly became Hepworth's abuser at various locations, including his presbytery at Warburton, as well as raping him violently in a hotel.
Hepworth once contemplated suicide, planning to kill himself in Bendigo, where Stockdale was buried. He had almost reached Bendigo when he changed his mind.
Throughout the abuse, says Hepworth, he felt violated, fearful and confused. He liked the circle in which his abusers moved. There was money, and talk of music, the arts and culture. So he went along with it, but not, he says, by choice. He had been only 15 when it all started in Stockdale's rooms at the Adelaide seminary where he had been given alcohol and then violently raped.
In some way, he says, he knew no other life. And he was afraid of their threats that if he revealed what went on within the circle he would be expelled from the seminary. His parents would find out. There would be shame and ruination.
But worst of all, he says, unless he kept quiet, the dream would not happen, and he would not become a priest.
No comments:
Post a Comment