In 1989, a senior Catholic Church figure approached high-profile advertising executive J S Ayliffe with an extraordinary request: help manage and contain allegations of clerical child sexual abuse.
Ayliffe did not agree to participate. But confronted with what he describes as a "he said, he said" situation-and unsure how to act-he kept the approach confidential. The secret remained buried for 25 years, until the 2014 Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse exposed the scale and systemic nature of abuse within Australian institutions.
Betrayal is Ayliffe's deeply personal account of conscience, complicity and silence. It examines the culture of denial, the failures of leadership and the devastating human cost borne by survivors and their families. Voices such as Chrissie Foster and the late Ian Lawther bring the lived reality of that cost into sharp focus.
This is not only a story about the Church. It is a story about power, reputation, moral hesitation and the consequences of looking away.
At a time when institutions speak of reform, integrity and social justice, Betrayal asks a difficult question: what does accountability truly require?
