‘It crucifies you every time’: the ‘crushing’ new tactic the church uses to block claims by abuse survivors

Craig Waters says he was sexually abused at St Brendan’s Catholic school in western Sydney as an eight-year-old, leading to long-term psychological problems, drug abuse and homelessness. Photograph: Christopher Hopkins/The Guardian

In the small workshop behind his home in the Victorian country town of Broadford, Craig Waters was huddled on the floor, rocking back and forth. He’d been back there for hours, crying and alone, trapped anew in childhood nightmares.

Waters was trying to process what the Catholic church had just told him: it was threatening to thwart his attempt to receive justice for the horrors he says he experienced as an eight-year-old boy at St Brendan’s Catholic primary school in western Sydney.