00:00 I wrote a book in 2020 called The Altar Boys for ABC Books about Catholic Church cover-up,
00:07 not about sexual abuse. Through that, hundreds of survivors have got in touch with me. But
00:13 then Brendan Watkins came to me. He's written this book, Tell No One. He told me this extraordinary
00:19 story. It's taken him 30 years to find out that he is the son of a former nun and a son
00:24 of a priest. But what struck me about this story was the secrecy, the cover-up, the lack
00:30 of transparency. And then once we delved into his father's life, Father Vincent Sheel, who
00:36 had this massive diocese from Broken Hill to Port Pirie, we just found all these unofficial
00:42 things were going on. And as you saw in that package, in 1950, his father got a call from
00:49 the Wyala Hospital. A doctor said, "We've got a baby here. It's been languishing for
00:54 10 days." The mother was a 16-year-old out on a pastoral station. And the priest essentially
01:00 just got an 18-year-old to fly the baby to Sydney to his own brother's family, who already
01:06 had nine children. And that was Terry Sheel, who you heard from there. Plus, we've got
01:11 Linda Lawless, who's having terrible issues dealing with the Melbourne Archdiocese. It's
01:16 all - they want recognition. That's the point.
01:19 You obviously got to know Brendan quite well by doing this story. And his story is one
01:24 that is shared by others, which we'll get to in a moment. Just what sort of trauma has
01:29 this had on his and other people's lives who've been in this situation?
01:33 Incredible trauma. Incredible trauma. Everyone has a right to know where they came from.
01:39 The latest research we've got - and this is a problem - we don't have proper scholarly
01:44 international studies. We think there's at least 20,000 children out there, because the
01:50 latest studies that we can find from the United States from 2018 says that only 50 per cent
01:56 of priests are celibate. There's 450,000 priests around the world. You do the math. But people
02:01 like Brendan and Linda Lawless, you know, they don't have the documents, the details
02:07 that they find out later, like Brendan did from his mother, that she was sent to another
02:12 state, she had to give him up, she barely held him - I don't think she even held him
02:17 - and that trauma has lasted for years and years and years. And another study in the
02:22 UK says there's a very high suicide rate. So there needs to be some honesty and transparency
02:29 for these children.
02:31 [BLANK_AUDIO]
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