Inside Sarah Ferguson’s new show ‘Revelation’, as she comes face to face with convicted paedophiles

In the car on the way to the prison, the crew was unusually quiet.

We were due at the prison at 9am to see Bernard McGrath, a former brother of John of God, now a convicted paedophile, serving 39 years for crimes against children.

No one knows, or likely ever will, the total number of his victims but we knew of more than 50 children, molested and raped while he was Brother Bernard, a teacher and headmaster in residential schools run by the Catholic order of St John of God in Australia and New Zealand.

Throughout the rolling scandal of clerical child abuse in Australia, the voice we have not heard is the voice of the perpetrators.

I wanted to speak to these men to ask them face-to-face how they led their double lives, masquerading as our moral guardians while abusing children in their care, and to get from them what hidden details I could about the cover up by their superiors.

On these journeys when the interview ahead is hard, I will the journey to last longer, to give me more time to fix my method.

How do I approach a man whose crimes are so vile, so disturbing, crimes against vulnerable children?

The children in the schools run by St John of God were often wards of the state or children with behavioural or learning difficulties, shipped off to boarding schools run by sadistic men like Bernard McGrath, protected by his order and the high standing of the brothers in a naïve, trusting community.

I can’t let my revulsion at his crimes drag me off course.

But I’m also a mother of sons. They are older now than the victims were when they met McGrath, but I remember those years.

I was generally trusting of teachers and other adults with whom they interacted.

Too trusting, I think now of the system and individuals. It made me think about the role of parents in this candal.

The mothers and fathers I met during filming were full of pain, desperate but unable to turn back the clock to make different decisions.

They had sent their children into the hands of cunning and manipulative offenders.

Most didn’t notice any change in their children when the abuse happened and in the most painful cases, found out but didn’t believe them.