Friends and family of John Pirona have gathered at Lake Macquarie, to say their final goodbyes.
Mr Pirona’s body was found near Tomago late last month – he’d been battling the pain of being abused by a Hunter priest in the 1970s.
Today he was farewelled with a guard of honour by his New South Wales Fire and Rescue colleagues.
Mr Pirona’s father has called for a Royal Commission into the Catholic Church’s handling of sex abuse cases.
Having been through the same treatment at the same school by the same paedophile priest, I can fully understand why John would do this type of thing to end the suffering& heartache. The priest who molested him sits in Goulburn Gaol, being fed and cared for by our penal system while John is no longer with us. If the authorities at the time had taken the appropriate action, instead of Shifting the priest in question to Taree, where he did the same thing there, and then to Waverley Boys College, where he did it again,Maybe a lot of lives would not be now forever ruined. The Catholic church should be brought to task over their treatment of the priest in question. I strongly feel that the supervisors of that priest be equally brought to Justice for failing in their duty of care to the rest of us who endured the wrath of this evil priest
The story is incomplete, as it says “he’d been battling the pain of being abused by a Hunter priest in the 1970s.”, when it fact he was not only battling the pain of being abused by the priest, but also of being abused by the school authorities that punished children that reported the same abuse.