Joan Katherine Isaacs - To Prey and To Silence: One Survivors Story of Child Sexual Abuse and Her Fight for Justice.

Part 1:
A Catholic Heritage

For over and over again in the Bible, when God wants something special or something important done, he doesnt call on an old person no, he chooses someone very young, not much more than a child.

Father Francis Edward Derriman;
1967 Sacred Heart Sandgate school yearbook

My story starts at the beginning, with my heritage and my parents

My father, Huubert, was one of fourteen children. He was born into a poor farming family living in a small village in the Netherlands. His parents were both Catholics, as were the generations before them, and he was brought up in the way of the Catholic faith. My mother, Gloria, was the eldest child of a Dutch father and English mother. Her father was a staunch and very strict Lutheran and was very anti-Catholic. My mother was born in Adelaide, Australia.

My father lived through the Second World War and his village had spent time under German occupation. He was a very intelligent person and had achieved exceptional grades in his schooling. Unfortunately, coming from a poor family as he did, there was no opportunity for further education in post-war Holland. As a young man not long out of school, he decided to enlist in the Dutch Army. He was sent to Indonesia.

My mother joined the Dutch Army in Australia. It was unusual for this to happen. Her father was Dutch and had served in the Dutch Army in both world wars. He had lied about his age both times so that he could serve. Under the circumstances my mother was given permission to join the Dutch Army too. She was sent from Australia to Indonesia to serve as part of the medical corps.

It was in war-torn Indonesia that my parents met. My father was hospitalised on two occasions, once for malaria and the other when he contracted pneumonia. It was during this time that my mother came to his attention as she walked past his window on her way to work in the dental section of the hospital. Fate, or more likely my fathers determination to meet her, eventually brought them together. Unbeknown to her parents, my mother became a Catholic on the 1st May 1948 in Macassar. With both parents now Catholic, any future children would be brought up in the faith. It was what the Catholic Church demanded. For me this is where it all began although I had not even been born.

Due to the serious deterioration of the civil war there, my parents were both evacuated from Indonesia and they decided to take the option of coming back to Australia to live. The chances of my father being able to resume his education in the Netherlands were slim, but he still wanted to study; Australia afforded him that opportunity. The two had very little money and had to leave most of what they owned in Indonesia when they left. They arrived separately in Australia and met up in Brisbane. They were married in the Brisbane Registry Office in August 1950 and were allocated accommodation in a migrant hostel south of Brisbane.

Joans parents, Huub and Gloria Bierman on their wedding day.

My mother went to work for a while after their marriage as they had nothing with which to start their married life. My father was able to get a job on the local council and at the same time enrolled at the Queensland Institute of Technology. He was still pursuing his dream of an education. He wanted to be an engineer. At this stage though he could only speak and understand a few words of English. But he was not prepared to waithe wanted an education and he would learn English by listening to his lectures.

So, my parents started their married life in the migrant camp. It was there, in the tiny two-roomed hut with no windows or bathroom that they brought their first two children into the world. My brother was born in 1951 just eleven months after the wedding, and I was born eighteen months later. This had not been their plan. Being the good Catholics that they both were, they followed the Churchs rulings and did not use artificial contraception. The Church regarded it as a very grave sin to try to limit your family, and sex was supposed to be primarily for the procreation of Gods children.

As my mother could only work for a short time after their marriage, they struggled to get ahead financially. So they remained in the camp for quite some time while my father worked each day and then went from work to lectures at the Queensland Institute of Technology five nights a week. He could not afford to buy an evening meal so my mother made him peanut butter sandwiches for lunch and more peanut butter sandwiches for dinner. This routine went on for a number of years.