Speaker 1: I get a you bloody champions. It's the you project,
Speaker 1: Tiffany and Cook and Brendon. I'm going to go. Brendan's
Speaker 1: probably a probably a vow. Brendan Andrew Brennan, Andrew what cains?
Speaker 1: He'll tell us in a minute if I fucked that up.
Speaker 1: I'm sure I did. What are the odds? Tiffy? You're good,
Speaker 1: I'm very good.
Speaker 2: Thanks. Happy Friday, Oh.
Speaker 1: Happy Friday to you. You're still looking glamorous. What have
Speaker 1: you done? You keep saying you haven't done anything? A
Speaker 1: bit of bloody. It's Loncesston's blue ice eyeliner.
Speaker 2: Just been putting a grown up jumper on over my
Speaker 2: muscletop for the You know, I'm being a grown up.
Speaker 1: We can't recognize you when you're not in a crop top.
Speaker 1: What's the difference between a crop top and a boob
Speaker 1: tube is.
Speaker 2: That boobtube doesn't have straps on the arms. Boobtube just
Speaker 2: goes around under your armpits with no straps.
Speaker 1: There you go. Do they still exist?
Speaker 3: Am I?
Speaker 1: Is that even a term that we're allowed to use
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty four? I'll just point out I didn't
Speaker 1: invent the term, so don't you yell at me.
Speaker 2: You're asking them wrong person. I've been wearing blokes muscletops
Speaker 2: for the last five or six years straight.
Speaker 1: Well, there's I could say so many things. Hi, Brendan,
Speaker 1: how are you?
Speaker 3: I'm good, Thanks, Craig, I'm I'm absolutely fine, enjoying my
Speaker 3: Friday afternoon.
Speaker 1: Well, gid you up. Thanks for joining us on the
Speaker 1: new project. So what's the middle name?
Speaker 3: Son?
Speaker 1: Does it start with a vow? Let me out ask
Speaker 1: that first.
Speaker 3: Well, I've got two and yeah, they're very Catholic names.
Speaker 3: So one is Michael, you know, maybe the ultimate Mick name.
Speaker 3: Of course, I've also got Francis, which they're all very Catholic.
Speaker 2: Bro's middle names. Francis.
Speaker 1: Oh really, Well my mum's brother's name was Francis rip
Speaker 1: uncle Frank. And is that is that? Because the second
Speaker 1: of those two names is a confirmation name.
Speaker 3: Michael is the confirmation name.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, do you know what that is?
Speaker 3: Tiff?
Speaker 1: Do you know what a confirmation name is?
Speaker 3: A name?
Speaker 2: But I was confirmed. I don't really pay attention to
Speaker 2: the whole thing though.
Speaker 1: Did you grow up in a Catholic church? How did
Speaker 1: I not know this? Were you?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 1: Are you the worst Catholic in the history of Catholics.
Speaker 2: Second to you, bro, Why did you know every word
Speaker 2: of the Bible doesn't mean you're good Catholic?
Speaker 1: No, I know that I'm a shit Catholic. In fact,
Speaker 1: what I loved I ripped something off Brendan's site. I
Speaker 1: can't find it now, but it was something like Gandhi
Speaker 1: said something like I like your Christ, but not your Christians.
Speaker 1: Your Christians are nothing like your Christ. Did I get
Speaker 1: that somewhat right? Brendan, Yeah, it's close. That's buried a
Speaker 1: way somewhere rather in the socials page. But yeah, you're close. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: Well did you go to Sorry Brendan, this should really
Speaker 1: be about you, but let me just catch up on
Speaker 1: ten years of tiff that did you go to Catholic schools?
Speaker 2: I went to a Catholic primary school.
Speaker 1: Did you pray to Sweet Baby Jesus? Yeah I did. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we walk down to the chap Wow, I did not
Speaker 1: know anyway, enough about enough about our history. Let's talk
Speaker 1: to our guests, Brenda. Did you only go to Catholic
Speaker 1: schools as well? Or did you actually well, you were adopted,
Speaker 1: so mate, were your parents even Catholic? Was your family Catholic.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. So in the sixties, so
Speaker 3: I was born and adopted in sixty one, the church
Speaker 3: went to huge pains to ensure all of the children,
Speaker 3: all of the Catholic children born went to Catholic families,
Speaker 3: right right, And so you know, the families that didn't
Speaker 3: have kids, they were very very keen to I'm sure
Speaker 3: that they were going to continue the community and to
Speaker 3: adopt them into childless families. And particularly it's like me
Speaker 3: that had the background that I had, so that the
Speaker 3: birth parents that I had always ended up with Catholic
Speaker 3: adopt for parents.
Speaker 1: Well, and was that I mean, obviously not common, but
Speaker 1: obviously not completely rare, because you say, when people who
Speaker 1: came from situations like you, So you're not Robinson Crusoe in.
Speaker 3: This No, there's well, depending on who you believe, there
Speaker 3: are no firm statistics, but it's been estimated that there's
Speaker 3: well over one hundred thousand children who have been fathered
Speaker 3: by Catholic priests.
Speaker 1: Oh my goodness, I'm writing them down. One hundred thousand.
Speaker 1: That is well, obviously, I mean, people have already read
Speaker 1: the intro and the synopsis of this show by the
Speaker 1: time they're hearing us, So they're going to know that
Speaker 1: your dad was a priest, or your biological father was
Speaker 1: a priest, and your biological mother was a nun. I
Speaker 1: bet that's a great conversation starter at dinners.
Speaker 4: Well, it makes it never good, no, no, no, it
Speaker 4: It is a sort of a microdrop moment. But it's
Speaker 4: probably the only advantage is you know your elevate a
Speaker 4: pitch when you're talking to publishers.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm sure that's going to get a few doors
Speaker 1: open and a few years open when you decided to.
Speaker 1: So your book is called Tell No One. When did
Speaker 1: you come up with the idea to, you know, kind
Speaker 1: of put your story, your life into something that we
Speaker 1: could all read and connect with.
Speaker 3: I've always been a journaler, so I've always written extensively
Speaker 3: because my story is very complicated, and what is contained
Speaker 3: in the book, or the majority of it, at least
Speaker 3: covers thirty years. So I at nearly thirty years of age,
Speaker 3: I discovered the identity of my mother when I got
Speaker 3: my original birth certificate, and it took me another nearly
Speaker 3: thirty years to find out who my birth father was.
Speaker 3: And there are all sorts of issues that obstacles that
Speaker 3: occurred in my path that I needed clear to find
Speaker 3: out that answer. I journaled as much as anything else,
Speaker 3: to record the things that happened, but equally to try
Speaker 3: and work out how I felt about it, you know,
Speaker 3: to unpack the complexities of the journey I was taking.
Speaker 3: When I found out my father was a Catholic priest,
Speaker 3: so that was two thousand and eighteen, I ended up
Speaker 3: quitting my job and thought I would spend twelve months
Speaker 3: working out who this man was because he had a
Speaker 3: very larger he had a huge life, and I wanted
Speaker 3: to research him, record it as much as anything else
Speaker 3: for my kids. I was job where I've been there
Speaker 3: for thirteen and a half years. I was over it.
Speaker 3: It was time to move on. I could afford to
Speaker 3: take a year off work, and the more I discovered
Speaker 3: and learned about my family, and more so the more
Speaker 3: I discovered about the children of priests, the more research
Speaker 3: that led to, and the more angry I became, and
Speaker 3: the more determined I became to turn what I was
Speaker 3: recording into a book to make public the reality of
Speaker 3: what the Catholic Church has done in silencing the children
Speaker 3: of prests, and indeed our mothers.
Speaker 2: Can I say, and I'm not blowing smoke. Brilliant book,
Speaker 2: so everyone should go and buy that. I bought it
Speaker 2: on audible after I first met Brendan, so good tell no.
Speaker 1: One is the name of the book. Brendan Watkins is
Speaker 1: the author. So I mean, I'm sure we could do
Speaker 1: an hour just on what the Catholic Church has done
Speaker 1: and not done. But give us a snapshot, just open
Speaker 1: the door a little bit in kind of enlightening us
Speaker 1: as to what the Catholic Church's response reaction is to
Speaker 1: you know, all of these kids.
Speaker 3: Well, look, I suppose to encapsulate the size of the issue.
Speaker 3: The church, you know today has something like four hundred
Speaker 3: thousand Catholic priests, and the church is very foggy around
Speaker 3: its definition of celibacy. And in surveys that have been
Speaker 3: done and Sipe is the most commonly quoted, half the
Speaker 3: Catholic priests are not celibate. And when you think about
Speaker 3: the Church's.
Speaker 1: View around what's hang on? Really yeah half.
Speaker 3: So it goes back to, you know, the Church has
Speaker 3: put vasiline over the lens of what the definition of
Speaker 3: celibacy is and it's not really all that old. The
Speaker 3: notion of the introduction of celibacy. It's only three or
Speaker 3: four hundred years old. The church was financially damaged by
Speaker 3: priests having children and their estate ending up in the
Speaker 3: hands of their family and not the church. Church introduced
Speaker 3: in the eleventh century are rules about preventing married men
Speaker 3: becoming priests, right, It didn't say you can't have sex,
Speaker 3: and so surveys of priests still received a foggy notion
Speaker 3: about what celibacy means. And in recent years surveys of
Speaker 3: priests have found that anonymously conducted that half of them
Speaker 3: is still having sex of one sort or another.
Speaker 1: That is, that is, But I mean the Bible talks
Speaker 1: about sex outside of marriage pretty clear, and lolls isn't
Speaker 1: based on the Bible, isn't It isn't that isn't it
Speaker 1: considered a sin within the church? Yeah?
Speaker 3: Indeed, And so I suppose in many ways, the press
Speaker 3: that have had children this is an extension of the
Speaker 3: abuse of minus in many ways. So it's a part
Speaker 3: of that story. So I think everyone's been aware. In Australia,
Speaker 3: the Royal Commission and largely what's happened is price have
Speaker 3: fathered children and as has happened with child abuse. The
Speaker 3: priest very often, if this becomes known, is moved on
Speaker 3: to another parish or another state or even another country,
Speaker 3: and he has no recognition of the child. Very often
Speaker 3: the women are honorable, very often. So you know, I
Speaker 3: know a huge number of children of priest personally and
Speaker 3: anecdotally through different groups, and the stereotype of my mother
Speaker 3: is the most common. So usually they're vulnerable single women.
Speaker 3: They're believers, so they're parishioners, and very often are very devout. Yes,
Speaker 3: and quite often they're the housekeeper or a woman that's
Speaker 3: come to the priest and she's been experiencing domestic violence
Speaker 3: or the husband's being killed, or the husband's run off.
Speaker 3: They're extremely vulnerable to spiritual abuse and in quite a
Speaker 3: number of cases physical abuse. Wow. So she becomes pregnant,
Speaker 3: the priest moves on and the church will more often
Speaker 3: than not deny, but in most cases might put a
Speaker 3: roof over the head of the woman. In extreme cases,
Speaker 3: they might reward her with some money, essentially to buy
Speaker 3: her silence, but that's always in exchange, or nearly always
Speaker 3: in exchange for a confidentiality ran WOW. In twenty and fourteen,
Speaker 3: the United Nation United Nations under the Rights of the
Speaker 3: Child Investigation recommended to the Vatican that it has to
Speaker 3: stop silencing the children of priests. This is a huge
Speaker 3: international phenomena and the Church has been incredibly successful in
Speaker 3: silencing the mothers and the children. Wow.
Speaker 1: So I mean this is an in your opinion question.
Speaker 3: This is not.
Speaker 1: An analytical or a database question. In your opinion. Are
Speaker 1: these priests more opportunists or predators, I'm sure or something else? Maybe?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm sure every case is unique, that they're all different,
Speaker 3: but they're Again, there aren't firm stats on this, but
Speaker 3: generally speaking, the priests that have had children very often
Speaker 3: have other children, and so it's not a once off,
Speaker 3: you know what I'm talking about, And the numbers I
Speaker 3: spoke about the priests that remain priests and deny recognition
Speaker 3: of their child. There are instances, and they're quite rare
Speaker 3: of the priest you know, having you know the thorn
Speaker 3: Bird's moment. You know, it's a love story. And in
Speaker 3: some of those instances they leave the priesthood and they
Speaker 3: marry the woman and they have the family. That's the rarity.
Speaker 3: That's not the that's not the story that I'm talking about.
Speaker 3: There are well over one hundred thousand people who have
Speaker 3: pessentially been gagged by the church because the priests won't
Speaker 3: recognize their child. And in many cases, you know, all
Speaker 3: the sort of foundation documents, birth certificates, details about the press,
Speaker 3: access to the priest's estate are all denied by the church.
Speaker 1: Have you had any blowback, either by the church or
Speaker 1: people within the church. There's probably a double question. I
Speaker 1: probably should have said how much?
Speaker 3: Well, not really, not really officially, no, not really. Yeah,
Speaker 3: there's been a huge way of response from mainly parishioners
Speaker 3: and mainly people in a similar vote to me. Wow,
Speaker 3: But look, officially no. I was with Alan and Nunwen.
Speaker 3: The book is published by Alan and so we had
Speaker 3: a lot of high level barristers working on my book
Speaker 3: to ensure that everything was able to be verified. But
Speaker 3: now look, the church, you know, treated me like it
Speaker 3: does every other child of a priest and mother that
Speaker 3: comes forward. Basically, they pull down the shutters and you
Speaker 3: hear nothing.
Speaker 1: And what can you? What can you or what are
Speaker 1: you comfortable to tell us Brennan about your biological mother
Speaker 1: and father that you can I know, we can read
Speaker 1: the book, don't forget everybody read the book tell no one.
Speaker 3: Sure. Well, most importantly, I feel a great sympathy for
Speaker 3: my mother. I believe my mother was a victim of
Speaker 3: my father, even though they spent many, many years of
Speaker 3: their lives together and she actually nursed him for the
Speaker 3: last eight or ten years of his life. They lived
Speaker 3: together under the same roof Wow. However, when they met,
Speaker 3: there was a thirty year age gap when she was
Speaker 3: around fifteen, and he was a much older man, and
Speaker 3: she was a vulnerable girl. And that's a stereotype. And
Speaker 3: he was the man, the spiritual leader, He was the
Speaker 3: hands and feet of God on earth. You can't say
Speaker 3: no to that if you are a vulnerable young woman,
Speaker 3: and that's the stereotypes. So that's the most important thing
Speaker 3: to remember. And you know, I believe my mother has
Speaker 3: not treated me well at all in the last thirty years,
Speaker 3: and she is still alive. But I absolutely understand it
Speaker 3: and empathize with her response. So, long story short, I
Speaker 3: got access to my birth certificate when I was nearly
Speaker 3: thirty because Kate, my partner, and I were about to
Speaker 3: have a family. Our story was a little complicated because
Speaker 3: I was always curious. I always wanted to know who
Speaker 3: my birth parents were. I have an adopted brother, he's
Speaker 3: a little older, we're super close, and he wanted nothing
Speaker 3: to do with it, had no interest. He thought it
Speaker 3: was bizarre that I was so keen to know these things.
Speaker 3: And I spent the last thirty years, you know, banging
Speaker 3: my head against a brick wall with no success, and
Speaker 3: he just keeps standing back, shaking his head. So I
Speaker 3: got my birth certificate, and I thought it had additional
Speaker 3: justification to find out who my birth parents were because
Speaker 3: Kate had a health issue called malignant hyperperrexia, which essentially
Speaker 3: means sure you can't have anesthetics, and it had killed
Speaker 3: a number of people within her family. And as we're
Speaker 3: about to have kids, I'm thinking, well, hang on, I
Speaker 3: know nothing about what's in my lurking in my DNA soup.
Speaker 3: What are the things that our kids might be vulnerable to?
Speaker 3: And you know, we were making plans how she was
Speaker 3: going to have anesthetic. It was needed, you know, when
Speaker 3: the birth occurred, and all those sorts of things, and
Speaker 3: when you have kids, it just makes you think about genetics.
Speaker 3: So I got my airth certificate. The Catholic Church arranged
Speaker 3: the adoption and they sat me down. I looked at
Speaker 3: my mother's name and it wasn't the stereotype that I expected. Normally,
Speaker 3: it's a teenager in those days, and passion had got
Speaker 3: the better of them and they were too young to
Speaker 3: have a child, and the babies put up for adoption.
Speaker 3: This was the woman who was twenty seven. Wow, she
Speaker 3: didn't have an Anglo name. I thought she'd have an
Speaker 3: Anglo name like ours, and it was something odd. She
Speaker 3: was in South Australia, so I desperately wanted to know more.
Speaker 3: And for all the reasons such as said, I really
Speaker 3: wanted to at least find out the biological history healthy shies.
Speaker 3: Cutting to the chase. They sat me down a few
Speaker 3: weeks later. They insisted, or not insisted. They were very
Speaker 3: persuasive in having me consent to then make contact with
Speaker 3: her on my behalf. And they sat me down and said,
Speaker 3: we're spoken to Maggie, your mother, and you'll never see her,
Speaker 3: you'll never talk to her, you'll never meet her. You
Speaker 3: need to go home and forget about it forever. And
Speaker 3: you know that's that's a blow that you know is
Speaker 3: reverberated through me for decades. And I didn't realize quite
Speaker 3: at the time the significance of it, and I tried
Speaker 3: to but I couldn't. And the further we went down
Speaker 3: the path of you know, getting pregnant and having kids,
Speaker 3: I couldn't let go of it. And again it's you know,
Speaker 3: some chapters in the book. But Kate, we were doing sleuthing,
Speaker 3: and so it was before the Year of Google. We
Speaker 3: were doing some sleuthing and retraced a sister in law
Speaker 3: who was in South Australia, and Kate rang the sister
Speaker 3: in law, making out she was, you know, a long
Speaker 3: lost friend. And I had a conversation with his sister
Speaker 3: in law and said, I'm trying to track down Maggie
Speaker 3: Beckett and this is a pseudonym. That's not everyone. And
Speaker 3: the woman replied, oh, you mean Maggie Vennune. M wow,
Speaker 3: And all of a sudden, the penny dropped. Ah, that's
Speaker 3: why she can't see me. That's why she won't expect
Speaker 3: to me. It made sense, and it was just so
Speaker 3: bizarre because I was raised him, you know, an indoctrination
Speaker 3: a school you know, not at all dissimilar to yours. Correct,
Speaker 3: And so I sort of let it go for some
Speaker 3: period of time, and eventually a year or two later
Speaker 3: wrote to her and she replied, and there was essentially
Speaker 3: thirty years of me discovering that she wasn't actually a
Speaker 3: nun when I was conceived or born, which is a
Speaker 3: very pertinent point to her. And she's still alive, and
Speaker 3: she finds that offensive that people might think that's the case,
Speaker 3: which I totally understand. She had been in an order,
Speaker 3: she had joined but not completed her term in the
Speaker 3: convent she left was outside of the convent. For my
Speaker 3: estimation is around three years I was conceived, born, and
Speaker 3: to pay her penance to atone she joined another convent
Speaker 3: and stayed for twenty five years, and very close to
Speaker 3: the period of her leaving that convent, twenty five years later.
Speaker 3: I made contact around nineteen ninety, so, just when she
Speaker 3: thought she'd done her penance, she'd paid the price, I
Speaker 3: show up and little did I know that when I
Speaker 3: made contact, she was living with my birth father. She
Speaker 3: was living with father, Vincent Shield, and for thirty years
Speaker 3: I tried to discover his identity and was told many
Speaker 3: different stories. I was told it was a short relationship,
Speaker 3: it was a long relationship. It was a man who
Speaker 3: had a family, a man that she rang a number
Speaker 3: of times until he had his phone disconnected, and eventually,
Speaker 3: many years after first contact, she told me, no, well
Speaker 3: I told you his name. I don't know why you
Speaker 3: keep nagging about his name's Paul Hayes. So I hired
Speaker 3: a private detective to run aroun around Sydney trying to
Speaker 3: find this Paul Haze where she used to live with
Speaker 3: my father, and spent a whole lot of money trying
Speaker 3: to find him. And eventually he came back and said, look,
Speaker 3: I've done a lot of these cases adoptions. I know
Speaker 3: a lot about this that I spoke to just about
Speaker 3: every Paul Haste that is in the age that could
Speaker 3: be your father. He doesn't exist. It's invented. I went
Speaker 3: back to my birth mother and her response is, well,
Speaker 3: you were lied to, and so as I and agreed,
Speaker 3: so she made out it it invented the name when
Speaker 3: she knew him. But of course he was still alive
Speaker 3: and they were still living together.
Speaker 1: In so that was thirty plus years ago. And so
Speaker 1: you and your mum have never really connected, No.
Speaker 3: It's all yeah, it's always been very arms length. And
Speaker 3: look we're mainly communicated by a letter. And in those
Speaker 3: thirty years it might only be six or eight letters.
Speaker 3: We've met face to face. She's met our Capan, my
Speaker 3: two kids. She and I look uncannily similar when I
Speaker 3: met her. She's the age I am now at sixty
Speaker 3: three or thereabouts. She's never wanted anything to do with
Speaker 3: her only two grandchildren. I mean, I feel enormous sympathy
Speaker 3: for her because this is the great trauma I am,
Speaker 3: the great trauma of her life. And she's been warmer
Speaker 3: to Kate, my partner, and her story is one of
Speaker 3: horrendous experience experiences with men, including my father. And again,
Speaker 3: you know origin I'm prepared to tell this story is
Speaker 3: because this is the stereotype. The reason people aren't coming forward,
Speaker 3: the reason people aren't talking is this is the stereotype.
Speaker 3: And my mother, my birth mother, has lied to me
Speaker 3: my entire life. And the relationship very often where a
Speaker 3: child raised by their birth mother is very common, where
Speaker 3: the priest is the father and the child discovers that
Speaker 3: everything that their mother has told them about their father
Speaker 3: has been alive, and it's destroyed families. It's irreparably damaged families.
Speaker 3: I didn't have a relationship with my birth mother at all.
Speaker 3: On the thirty years of knockbacks and prostration is not common,
Speaker 3: but this is something that the Church has perpetuated ongoing.
Speaker 3: And I didn't find out the identity of my father
Speaker 3: until I did my DNA in Well. I did it
Speaker 3: in twenty and fifteen. It was a complicated case which
Speaker 3: Kate sold, which I didn't have the patient sold wherewith
Speaker 3: all to solve And it took three years and I
Speaker 3: found out his name in twenty and eighteen. And the
Speaker 3: point that's important to know is that it's only now
Speaker 3: that people are doing ancestry DNA and the other DNA
Speaker 3: services that they're finding these things out. You know, since
Speaker 3: my books come out I had I don't know if
Speaker 3: it's hundreds, but it's dozens and dozens and dozens of
Speaker 3: people come to me saying I thought the DNA was
Speaker 3: wrong because my father. It's at my father was a
Speaker 3: Catholic creed. And it's now that the Church is being
Speaker 3: confronted with this reality, and it's now that people are
Speaker 3: coming forward and telling their stories and it's horrific. You know.
Speaker 3: There was a woman in London called Sarah Thomas, who's
Speaker 3: the daughter of a priest, who started a PhD and
Speaker 3: spoke to one hundred children of Press, and she found
Speaker 3: that fifty six percent of the children of Press, fifty
Speaker 3: six percent had attempted suicide or had suicidal ideation.
Speaker 1: Wow, how does it feel like when you say to me,
Speaker 1: and you say to our audience that you were the
Speaker 1: great trauma of your biological, your birth mum's life, Like
Speaker 1: you seem inexplicably okay with that. I have such admiration
Speaker 1: for you, that is, like you so have got your
Speaker 1: shit together or you're the best actor ever. But I
Speaker 1: feel like it's the former. Why Firstly, it's amazing, and
Speaker 1: I'm it's going to say I'm proud of you, that's silly,
Speaker 1: but I'm so respectful of you, Like there seems to
Speaker 1: be so much compassionate understanding, And I don't know. Forgiveness
Speaker 1: is that the am I on the money? There?
Speaker 3: Is that? What I'm absolutely it is forgiveness. I'm like
Speaker 3: a dog with a bone and I haven't been able
Speaker 3: to let go of it. And I don't know how
Speaker 3: healthy it is to be looking in the rearview era
Speaker 3: for so long. I have spent five years on this
Speaker 3: and I'm going to leave it alone very soon and
Speaker 3: work on another book that's about looking up, not looking down,
Speaker 3: or looking forward not looking back. Look, I've spoken to
Speaker 3: her quite a number of the mothers of press children,
Speaker 3: like my mother, who have some couple in America in particular,
Speaker 3: but deal with other mothers of children's Chris, and they
Speaker 3: have been to Helen back. And I feel very strongly
Speaker 3: that I've been in a position where my life was
Speaker 3: at a stage where I was established professionally financially, I had,
Speaker 3: you know, I've had a fantastic life, and I've had
Speaker 3: everything going for me. I had wonderful, wonderful adoptive parents
Speaker 3: and a partner and family, kids, friends and people have
Speaker 3: flocked to me that have been in the same boat
Speaker 3: and they're enormously damaged. So I felt as though I've
Speaker 3: had an obligation because I've been in a position a
Speaker 3: time of life, to be able to speak up when
Speaker 3: others can't. You know, very often the children of priests
Speaker 3: end up in orphanage's foster care, unsuccessful adoptions. They're in
Speaker 3: that fifty six percent that attempted suicide or had suicidal ideation,
Speaker 3: And by the skin of my teeth, missed that and
Speaker 3: the church. So look, I want to be an advocate,
Speaker 3: you know, the church silenced the damaged, and there are
Speaker 3: people who would come forward that an'tswer damaged and are
Speaker 3: prepared to speak up, but there's very few of us.
Speaker 3: So I felt as though I had an obligation, and
Speaker 3: I you know, I forgive my birth mother. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: I could be wrong here too. I'm just reading between
Speaker 1: the lines. It feels like having a purpose bigger than
Speaker 1: you has also been therapeutic for you. Yeah right, yep, yeah,
Speaker 1: like being able to serve and help and love others
Speaker 1: and understand others, and for them to be able to
Speaker 1: just the fact that you are as as mentally, emotionally
Speaker 1: and healthy and physically healthy as you are. I'm sure
Speaker 1: there's peaks and troughs like all of us, but that
Speaker 1: you can talk to them like you talking to them
Speaker 1: is way better than most people talking to them, even
Speaker 1: if it's a compassionate person or a psych or a
Speaker 1: you know you who have been through it. I guess
Speaker 1: that for them is a different kind of connection.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Look, I suppose it's trite, but you know the
Speaker 3: old if you get lemons and make lemonade, you know,
Speaker 3: I think it applies. You're trying to find a good
Speaker 3: We all want to feel useful, and you know, there
Speaker 3: were waves and waves of communications from people in the
Speaker 3: same boat that have been enormously damaged, and that's encouraged
Speaker 3: me to speak up because I you know, I've had
Speaker 3: so much communication with people that have benefited from what
Speaker 3: I've written and what I've said, and yeah, you feel useful.
Speaker 3: And it's not healthy to stay in this space. It's
Speaker 3: not easy to talk about. But I know it's good.
Speaker 3: I know it does good, and so you know, in
Speaker 3: some ways it's I think also an acknowledgment or but
Speaker 3: it's gratitude or you know, the good luck I've had.
Speaker 3: How old are your kids, Brendan, One is twenty seven
Speaker 3: and one is thirty. How did they respond to this
Speaker 3: news where they're like, my granddad was a priest, All right,
Speaker 3: coffee anyone? Well, look, it's interesting. You know, they had
Speaker 3: nothing to do with the church their entire lives, and
Speaker 3: even though their grandparents, my parents were devout, they didn't
Speaker 3: get me till quite late, and so they didn't really
Speaker 3: have anything to do with the church through their grandparents.
Speaker 3: On my side and on Kate's side, they were incredibly
Speaker 3: cynical about the church. So they don't have all the
Speaker 3: sort of hang ups about priests and what they're supposed
Speaker 3: to be like. And Nun's been right, So yeah, I
Speaker 3: think they just thought it was one of my little obsessions.
Speaker 3: I didn't talk about it much to that and my
Speaker 3: son is very literate and he was really helpful with
Speaker 3: the book. And my daughter didn't want to know anything
Speaker 3: about it until it was finished and published and it
Speaker 3: came out of a box that had a cover on
Speaker 3: it and she read it and she was absolutely knocked out.
Speaker 3: And it's had a real I think it's had a
Speaker 3: real impact on her. So but yeah, look that the
Speaker 3: whole you know, priests having sex thing's that's really an
Speaker 3: old person thing, you know. It was interesting. Part of
Speaker 3: the book is going out to the desert because my
Speaker 3: father spent most of his time in the South Australian
Speaker 3: desert and going out there to his parishes and going
Speaker 3: to churches and going to masses and meeting people that
Speaker 3: knew him really well. I thought that I'll be dead
Speaker 3: because he died ninety years of asi in ninety ninety two,
Speaker 3: because he was thirty years older than my mother, but
Speaker 3: he was from a generation before mine adoptive parents. But
Speaker 3: he was still remembered, and eventually it came out. You know,
Speaker 3: I thought i'd be up all the cover it in saying,
Speaker 3: you know, I can't tell them the truth. I said, oh, look,
Speaker 3: I've done my DNA and my father's this guy, sorry,
Speaker 3: not my father, a relative, a distant relative. Is this
Speaker 3: guy who used to be a priest. And you know,
Speaker 3: I'd be standing there, you know, with my hand and
Speaker 3: my chin sort of with one foot forward and back
Speaker 3: and talking as I am. And they said he used
Speaker 3: to always do that. He used to always stand with
Speaker 3: his hand like exactly your voice now and I think
Speaker 3: about your voice is exactly like And a number of
Speaker 3: them picked it pretty quickly.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 3: And the point I'm trying to make is the parishioners,
Speaker 3: the people that were the most accepting of the reality
Speaker 3: of children of priests and the most aware of the
Speaker 3: fact that policts had sexual appetites and lives actively are
Speaker 3: the parishioners, the people that are in constant denial. You know,
Speaker 3: I've spoken to a number of groups, and you know,
Speaker 3: the first thing I say is I love Catholics. I
Speaker 3: love the parishioners. I have no problem with the Catholics.
Speaker 3: The most accepting compassionate people that I've ever met dealing
Speaker 3: with this subject are Catholics. The people I have problems
Speaker 3: with the hierarchy within the churches, the priests, and the
Speaker 3: further up the totem pole you go, the more in
Speaker 3: denial they are, so bishops and cardinals.
Speaker 1: On your website, it's got this thing said, I was
Speaker 1: given my father's rosary beads, my birth father's rosary beads. Recently.
Speaker 1: It got me thinking, how many prayers does a priest
Speaker 1: recite for deserting his son or daughter for his own sins?
Speaker 1: Did my father confess and if so, to who? When
Speaker 1: did you write that?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Maybe, but towards the end. Actually, yeah, I was
Speaker 3: given those rosary beads by a woman who was his
Speaker 3: assistant right in his presbytery in the desert in South Australia,
Speaker 3: which he'd had for many years. And yeah, I think
Speaker 3: she picked up very very quickly who I was and
Speaker 3: was not at all surprised, right, But yeah, look at it,
Speaker 3: it's a questioned many children of priests have, you know,
Speaker 3: do they confess who? Do they tell? Who knows?
Speaker 1: Tell us about tell us about your adoptive parents?
Speaker 3: Brennan, Yeah, Royan Bette Watkins. They got me late Damien.
Speaker 3: My brother is older and interestingly so we're a Richmond family.
Speaker 3: And sad Ignatius in Church Street was dead Parish church.
Speaker 3: And my old man was very heavily involved with the
Speaker 3: Richmond football club. He actually volunteered fifty years service. So
Speaker 3: he did a whole bunch of things. But most of
Speaker 3: what he did and what he's known for his being
Speaker 3: the timekeeper for the Puddy club amazing. And they couldn't
Speaker 3: have kids and were he was out walking their dash
Speaker 3: hounds one after and the local priest tapped him on
Speaker 3: the shoulder and said, you know Roy, you and Bette,
Speaker 3: you know you you're in your thirties year you don't
Speaker 3: have children. What's going on? Good Catholic man like you
Speaker 3: should have children? What say you adopt? And that was
Speaker 3: my brother and Roy agreed and he put his name
Speaker 3: on the list as you do. It's an application for adoption.
Speaker 3: And fifteen months later they actually got a phone call
Speaker 3: and said, and my mother was thirty nine at this stage,
Speaker 3: get older than Roy, and they said we have another
Speaker 3: child for you. It's a boy. You need to come tomorrow.
Speaker 3: So they hadn't applied. They hadn't gone through any of
Speaker 3: the processes and they had no notice, and they didn't
Speaker 3: really have any say that's the norm. The children of chress.
Speaker 3: People are selected, families are selected, and so they had me,
Speaker 3: you know, so they're relatively old parents. They were fabulous people.
Speaker 3: We lived in Richmond. We had a sort of a
Speaker 3: delicate tests and sandwich shop in Bridge Road, Richmond, which
Speaker 3: you know, I'm incredibly fond of that part of the world.
Speaker 3: And you know, by chance, my son's brought house and
Speaker 3: moved to Richmond. And they were mad about the football,
Speaker 3: they were mad about sport. They were devout Catholics in
Speaker 3: that way where really they didn't know anything about the
Speaker 3: Bible or how the church went. But they were at
Speaker 3: church come Wayne High or shine every Sunday and they
Speaker 3: were absolutely locked on and observed lantern whatever it might
Speaker 3: be till the day they died. They both got to
Speaker 3: around eighty. So they were absolutely supportive for Damien and
Speaker 3: my entire lives went to the sport, did everything that
Speaker 3: parents do and birth children couldn't have a closer relationship
Speaker 3: too to their offspring that Damien and I enjoyed with
Speaker 3: Ryan Bett. And they would have given their lives for us. Wow,
Speaker 3: And that's how we felt, you know, that's how we
Speaker 3: grew up. There was absolutely no difference. And probably, you know,
Speaker 3: with them and many many, many adoptive kids, you think
Speaker 3: I think the family tries a bit harder. It was
Speaker 3: weird that Damien and I and Roy and Bett couldn't
Speaker 3: for four people couldn't look more un alike, and our
Speaker 3: interests were so different. You know, everything Damien is he's
Speaker 3: like this computer scientist and he's sci fi and doctor
Speaker 3: who and he's facts and he's directed. Is a nerd absolutely, yeah,
Speaker 3: he's a PhD. He's very very successful in there. And
Speaker 3: I'm the opposite. I'm humanities and books and totally different person.
Speaker 3: And our parents were different again, And you know, I
Speaker 3: always thought, why the hell didn't the church make some
Speaker 3: effort to try and at least adopt kids into families
Speaker 3: where there'd be some sort of physical resemblance at least.
Speaker 1: Good luck with that. They probably just went, you know what,
Speaker 1: they're really good people, and these kids need some really
Speaker 1: good people.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, well I think that's it. But I do
Speaker 3: know that they made a really significant effort in trying
Speaker 3: to place the children of priest and or nuns, but
Speaker 3: you know some Vincent's Private in Melbourne. Melbourne was sort
Speaker 3: of the epicenter of the children of priests in Australia
Speaker 3: and St Vincent's Private is where the majority of priests
Speaker 3: children were born and the adoptions were arranged from mother Fabian,
Speaker 3: who's a well known sister within the church, arranged those
Speaker 3: and then destroyed the records of the children.
Speaker 1: Here's a weird question, but I'm just curious about your
Speaker 1: thoughts about this is a big question, but the future
Speaker 1: of the Catholic Church. Like, since I was a kid,
Speaker 1: it seemed to be flourishing. And I was a kid
Speaker 1: pretty much when you were a kid, And I remember
Speaker 1: going to Mass and there'd be two three, four hundred
Speaker 1: people on a Sunday morning. It was just and my
Speaker 1: mum and dad are still My mom and dad are
Speaker 1: eighty five. They still go to Mass on Sunday mornings
Speaker 1: and there's about fifteen old people that are pretty much
Speaker 1: all the same as them. You know, I don't think
Speaker 1: there's anyone there under seventy. What are your thoughts. I
Speaker 1: know this is not specific to your story, but I'm
Speaker 1: just curious as two blokes who grew up or in fact,
Speaker 1: two blokes and a woman who grew up in Catholicism
Speaker 1: that I just discovered. If what are your thoughts.
Speaker 3: Well, look, I know expert, but my observation is, you know,
Speaker 3: in the last forty years me being in a church,
Speaker 3: funerals and weddings that you know, that was it, Yes,
Speaker 3: And so it was a distorted view of the numbers
Speaker 3: of people that were there. But since I found out
Speaker 3: my father was priest, I went to a lot of
Speaker 3: churches and a number of services in parishes where he was,
Speaker 3: and those numbers have really sinned out, and so you'd
Speaker 3: go to the services. You know, there used to be
Speaker 3: three or four services on a Sunday morning and there
Speaker 3: was only one and usually there's the front two or
Speaker 3: three rows that are occupied, and that was it. And
Speaker 3: they were occupied by people who were very old, so
Speaker 3: people like your parents great and there weren't any young
Speaker 3: people are all older. And one of the things in
Speaker 3: the outback, and one of the things that the parishioners
Speaker 3: complained to me about was that most of the treets
Speaker 3: were either from well in South Australia, from Malaysia, Indonesia
Speaker 3: and Africa. And though they loved the priests. They had
Speaker 3: a really hard time understanding, and it's evident that when
Speaker 3: they die out, those churches will no longer operate. And
Speaker 3: that's quite a number of churches. But I think the
Speaker 3: Catholic Church is booming in the Third World. There's a
Speaker 3: huge number of children of priests in the Children of
Speaker 3: Priests social media groups that are from Africa, and they're
Speaker 3: young men and women. So the church is doing incredibly well,
Speaker 3: as it always has. It's a missionary it's in the
Speaker 3: hope and shame business, and it does incredibly well in
Speaker 3: areas where people are undergoing extreme poverty. The Catholic Church
Speaker 3: also is very successful at business, and what it succeeds
Speaker 3: in the Western world is education. And so you know,
Speaker 3: particularly in Australia, the funding of the Catholic institutions is
Speaker 3: very strong and it's not going to go away overnight.
Speaker 3: But I think in the Western world it's got the
Speaker 3: hell of a lot of competition.
Speaker 1: Wow, I love chatting with you. So interesting, so interesting.
Speaker 1: So the book is called Tell No One. Brendan Watkins
Speaker 1: is the man. He's a gun, He's a fucking treasure.
Speaker 1: He probably I probably shouldn't swear because I feel like
Speaker 1: he doesn't swear.
Speaker 3: How do people I swear plenty, but when I talk
Speaker 3: about the god stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he probably yeah, he probably needs to contrived. I
Speaker 1: can imagine how you go for your life. But if
Speaker 1: only I had that self restraint, You're a better man
Speaker 1: than I youngered in as my mum would say. How
Speaker 1: do people apart from your book? Is there any way
Speaker 1: that people can connect with you? Do you want to
Speaker 1: be connected with email, social media, home address, personal phone number?
Speaker 1: Just kidding and.
Speaker 3: Look, everything hangs off my website, so Brendan Watkins dot com.
Speaker 3: There's a fair bit of information there. A lot of
Speaker 3: people want information about academic research that have backed things up,
Speaker 3: or where to go for help or who to speak to,
Speaker 3: and a lot of social media content is there, and
Speaker 3: of course a lot of people want to go there
Speaker 3: to find links to buy the book, and there's there's
Speaker 3: media there. So the ID Day at ABC Compass program,
Speaker 3: which in eight or nine months ago has gone up
Speaker 3: on YouTube and gone international. So the combination of I
Speaker 3: view and the episode about children are prest I did
Speaker 3: with Compasses somewhere around two and a half million views,
Speaker 3: So you know, I'm getting a lot of contact from
Speaker 3: people all over the world. But yeah, everything, if people
Speaker 3: want to follow things is through Brendan. What cans stock
Speaker 3: com on? Are you?
Speaker 1: And if you're a Catholic priest and you want Brendan
Speaker 1: to come and talk at your church, just give us
Speaker 1: your shout out. I'm sure you'll be super welcome. Make hey,
Speaker 1: thank you so much. We'll say goodbye, affair, but appreciate
Speaker 1: you so much for being on the You project. And Tiff,
Speaker 1: thanks for hooking us up. What a good get that.
Speaker 2: He's pretty a legend, isn't he?
Speaker 1: He s he goes all right, doesn't he? I thought
Speaker 1: it'd be more damaged. I'm more damaged than him. That's
Speaker 1: fucking disappointing. Thanks Brandon, good on you.
Speaker 3: Thanks great, Thanks Ti, thank you