Author(s): Bryan Keon-Cohen

Fiction

Young boys and girls are sexually abused by Father O'Halloran at a parish church choir in Melbourne. A secret self-help society, The Apocrypha, is organised by victims Ashley and Keith at their school. The Society members engage in a bizarre Competition while Secretary Keith records the offending priest's abuse in notebooks. The secret Society is discovered, raided by teachers and Ashley is interrogated by the Principal. A young "Apocryphal" suicides at school and O'Halloran is quickly removed by church authorities to a mountain retreat where he experiences, he believes, a magical epiphany. Years later, Ashley and Keith and their girlfriends, Samantha and Felicity, all "survivors" and all damaged, navigate life in their twenties as best they can. Ashley studies law at Melbourne University. He graduates and joins the Victorian Bar, while continuing to struggle with his demons and living with Keith, now a drug addicted but talented street artist. Ashley and Keith, encouraged by Samantha and Felicity, reluctantly initiate criminal proceedings against their abuser. But after so many years, who is willing or able to give evidence and be cross-examined? Will the Apocryphals bring O'Halloran to account once and for all and finally achieve "justice" or will their old demons resurface to make life miserable again?