Woman was forced to marry the son of the Catholic priest who raped her
When Barbara was 18 she was forced into a marriage with the son of a priest who raped her.
Barbara, whose name has been changed to protect her family’s identity, has made a complaint to the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care about how the priest raped her and forced her to marry his secret son, who later went on to sexually abuse their children and grandchild.
It was 1966 when Barbara was forced to marry a 33-year-old man, who she later learned was the son of Fr George “Doc” Harrison, the then Parish Priest in Hokitika who she says pushed her into the marriage with the support of a nun who was head teacher at her school.
When Barbara was 15 years old Harrison, with support from a nun, began to talk to Barbara after class and suggested that she marry James*. She said the nun told her to get married and submit to her husband.
She said she was raped by James a week after her 16th birthday.
She told her mother and begged to be allowed go to Christchurch for work but her mother talked to Harrison who told her if she had had sex then she had to marry James.
She arranged to run away to her sister’s home but Harrison found out two days before the wedding and ordered her to meet him at the presbytery for “marriage lessons”.
“At that meeting Doc raped me. On the couch in the front room of the presbytery. He raped me two days before the wedding in order to stop my escape. This sent me into a zombie-like state, shocked. I sank into a kind of oblivion,” she said.
He officiated at the wedding.
https://i.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/129...-raped-her
When Barbara was 18 she was forced into a marriage with the son of a priest who raped her.
Barbara, whose name has been changed to protect her family’s identity, has made a complaint to the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care about how the priest raped her and forced her to marry his secret son, who later went on to sexually abuse their children and grandchild.
It was 1966 when Barbara was forced to marry a 33-year-old man, who she later learned was the son of Fr George “Doc” Harrison, the then Parish Priest in Hokitika who she says pushed her into the marriage with the support of a nun who was head teacher at her school.
When Barbara was 15 years old Harrison, with support from a nun, began to talk to Barbara after class and suggested that she marry James*. She said the nun told her to get married and submit to her husband.
She said she was raped by James a week after her 16th birthday.
She told her mother and begged to be allowed go to Christchurch for work but her mother talked to Harrison who told her if she had had sex then she had to marry James.
She arranged to run away to her sister’s home but Harrison found out two days before the wedding and ordered her to meet him at the presbytery for “marriage lessons”.
“At that meeting Doc raped me. On the couch in the front room of the presbytery. He raped me two days before the wedding in order to stop my escape. This sent me into a zombie-like state, shocked. I sank into a kind of oblivion,” she said.
He officiated at the wedding.
https://i.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/129...-raped-her
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
