Disgust as memorial ribbons for Catholic Church child sex abuse victims vanish

Wednesday, 5 June 2019

Mike Ledingham launched his book The Catholic Boys at Our Lady of the Assumption Catholic Church in Onehunga in 2019.

Child abuse victims are shocked after commemorative ribbons with heartfelt messages vanished from a church.

The colourful ribbons honouring sex abuse victims have gone less than one week after Mike Ledingham launched his book The Catholic Boys on Saturday at a church in Onehunga, Auckland.

Catholic Church spokeswoman Lyndsay Freer said she checked with Bishop Patrick Dunn, and he did not know about the ribbons or authorise their removal.

An ex-army colleague and tohunga, Rehua Ote Rangi Kereama blessed and cleansed the site.

But Dr Murray Heasley said the ribbon-tying event was obviously crucial to Saturday's ceremony - so if Dunn or church officials did not know the ribbons were there, it showed how 'tone-deaf' they were.

This ribbon read 'Love lasts forever, if it's not cut off at the knees'.

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Mike Ledingham, right, launched his book The Catholic Boys last week. His brother Chris was also a victim of the priest.

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'There is absolutely no way church officials were unaware of the symbolic importance of these ribbons,' said Heasley, who is spokesman for Survivors of Abuse in Faith-based Institutions.

He said the ribbons were treble-tied and yanked and must have been cut or otherwise deliberately removed from Our Lady of the Assumption Church.

'Their removal spits in the face of Māori and Pākehā alike,' Heasley added.

'Similar ribbons tied to the gates of St Joseph's Cathedral, Dunedin, in November last year are still there and the Bishop there, Michael Dooley, tied his own ribbon in support.'

He said messages were 'full of hope and love' and calls for justice.

Chris Ledingham is one of the men who never discussed the abuse for decades.

'They are the voice of the laity [ordinary people] abused by clerics and their removal is just further abuse.'

Heasley said he noticed the ribbons were gone about noon on Wednesday.

Ribbons were tied to the iron fence facing the cemetery park.

Stuff has visited the site - and the area near where the ribbons were tied appears to have a CCTV camera.

Freer said if there was CCTV footage then 'certainly' the Church would endeavour to investigate using that footage.

'There are people around who do the gardening and the maintenance of the property and they might have seen the ribbons and they might have taken them off without even knowing what they were.'

She said the church would back attempts to tie any ribbons back on.

Ledingham was one of three brothers the late Father Francis 'Frank' Green abused.

He said Saturday's presbytery cleansing ceremony, which tohunga Rehua Ote Rangi Kereama led, was a 'process of release'.

For decades, the brothers never spoke about the abuse.

Ledingham started writing in the mid-1990s about incidents described in The Catholic Boys and the church's hold over his Irish Catholic community.

Reporter Eugene Bingham, currently with Stuff Circuit, broke the story in the early 2000s about the abuse and the Ledinghams' quest for justice.

Ledingham said the 2018 scandal involving Adelaide archbishop Philip Wilson, who resigned after being convicted for covering up child abuse, was among recent events motivating him to finally publish The Catholic Boys.