These women experienced alleged bullying so severe, they're no longer Catholic

A Catholic order is engaged in an extraordinary legal stoush with women it employed to investigate child abuse, turning on a whistleblower after she alleged serious bullying by its leader and knowingly using an alleged child abuser as a star witness in a court case.

An ABC investigation has uncovered allegations by a group of women who claim severe bullying and intimidation by the province leader of the Sydney-based Missionaries of the Sacred Heart (MSC), which runs four Australian schools.

At the same time, MSC was defending a historical child sexual abuse case in Victoria's Supreme Court, putting forward a priest and former school principal as a crucial witness without disclosing that there had been abuse allegations substantiated against him.

After that case was thrown out on appeal, MSC launched legal action against one of the women who alleged she had been bullied by the province leader, accusing her of leaking confidential information.

The behaviour by MSC's leadership has been reported to the highest levels in the Catholic Church, including the Pope's representative in Australia, but nothing has been done.

Now, those at the centre of the stoush have lost their faith and one has been left with a $500,000 legal bill she is unable to pay.

A lifelong Catholic, Meta Jackman worked as the director of professional standards at MSC in Sydney.

Her job required her to investigate allegations of wrongdoing but Ms Jackman never thought she would become a victim herself.

She is now engaged in a lengthy and expensive legal case against MSC because of the alleged conduct of its current province leader, Father Stephen Hackett.

Ms Jackman, her support officer Anne-Marie Snelling and another former MSC employee, Clare Shearman, have accused Father Hackett of bullying. Ms Jackman and Ms Snelling have since filed workplace injury claims in the Federal Court.

The women allege the workplace became intolerable when Father Hackett started running the order, and say they were ultimately unable to be in the same room as him.

Ms Jackman physically shakes when she demonstrates the tone of voice Father Hackett used to speak to her in meetings.

"Meta! What do you think is going to be achieved here?!" she shouts.

"He's a physically intimidating presence," she explains.

The MSC workplace was allegedly so traumatic that Ms Snelling says her psychologist and rehabilitation specialist had both deemed it "too toxic" for her ever to return.

"He's a very big man, too, and I'm not a big person. I often felt he would loom over me.

"There was a physicality to his anger as well as the explosiveness of it and it would come out of nowhere."

Clare Shearman, a former spiritual director who worked for MSC, recalls Father Hackett would frequently "flip his lid".

"He's just lost control of his ability to manage how he is coming over, shouting, getting bright red in the face," she says.

An affidavit sworn in support of Ms Jackman obtained by 7.30, written by Father Hackett's predecessor as province leader, Father Chris McPhee, alleged the behaviour was not unprecedented.

It says when Father Hackett was secretary of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference (ACBC), the peak body for bishops in Australia, "there were allegations made by women he worked with there that he had bullied them" and a historical record existed on his file.

"I have also observed that [Father Hackett] has been unwilling to reflect on those behaviours or take responsibility for them. I have on several occasions attempted to address this issue with him directly," Father McPhee wrote in the affidavit.

In April, another MSC priest wrote to the entire order about Father Hackett's history and begged them not to re-elect him as province leader.

"Stephen displays a pattern of behaviour that is, and has been highly damaging to many people … He has an explosive anger which is prone to spontaneously erupt," Father Mark Hanns wrote.

Those pleas were ignored, with Father Hackett re-elected as province leader in May.

"He's left to continue to intimidate, bully, destroy women's lives by the way he behaves," Ms Jackman says.

Solicitor Ros Everett is a former President of the NSW Law Society who chaired the MSC board until Father Hackett's management style led her to resign in disgust.

"Stephen Hackett didn't believe outsiders should be doing these [child abuse] investigations," Ms Everett says.

"He believed it should have been just [MSC] priests doing the investigation, and he said 'this is all rubbish. We follow canon law, we follow our religious vows. We are not bound by civil law'."

Kathleen McCormack, who was knighted by the late Pope Francis for her work on his child abuse taskforce, the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, also quit over Father Hackett's stance on these issues.

"As you would be aware, in your capacity as Head of the relevant entity (MSC), you have clear and specific obligations under state-based statutory schemes," Ms McCormack wrote in her resignation letter.

Stephen Hackett declined to be interviewed and denied the allegations of bullying.

In a statement, MSC said it takes "allegations of this nature extremely seriously".

"We are committed to fostering a safe, respectful and inclusive workplace," it said.

The statement said the women's claims were not substantiated in an investigation which had been commissioned by the order.

Their workplace injury claims continue in the Federal Court.

MSC was simultaneously defending a historical child abuse case against one of its priests in the Victorian Supreme Court brought by a victim given the pseudonym "Mr Clifford".

He alleged he had experienced terrible abuse as a boy attending Monivae College, an MSC school in the western Victorian town of Hamilton.

The MSCs put up a star witness in Father Malcolm Fyfe, the former Monivae principal and person who had first encouraged Father Hackett to join the priesthood.

Father Fyfe told the court that as school principal, he created a "family environment" and a "home away from home".

He didn't have knowledge that one teacher was acting sexually inappropriately with students, and said he removed another who strapped students on their bare bottoms.

The Missionaries of the Sacred Heart ultimately won the trial, with the judge finding that Father Fyfe was an impressive and credible witness.

"His evidence was critical in this trial, and it was a big part of the reason why my client's claim failed," solicitor Michael Magazanik tells 7.30.

But the court had not been told some key information about Father Fyfe.

In the basement of the MSC's Kensington Monastery, its Professional Standards office — then run by Ms Jackman and Ms Snelling — had been uncovering files about Father Fyfe's past.

Months before the trial began, another former student of Monivae College had reported allegations of abuse by Father Fyfe to MSC's headquarters, and an external investigator had been appointed and taken the former student's statement.

The investigation substantiated the former student's claims and the MSC offered an apology to him for the abuse.

Ms Snelling said she told MSC's lawyers that Father Fyfe was being investigated for child abuse allegations, but he was still allowed to appear as the order's key witness.

"I would not have thought it at all appropriate that he be put on the stand and made mention of such to the legal team," Ms Snelling says.

After Mr Clifford had lost his case, the alleged victim who had complained about Father Fyfe coincidentally sought legal advice from Mr Magazanik's firm.

"Prior to the decision in our case, the Missionaries had substantiated this man's complaint and offered him an apology for Fyfe's sexual misconduct with him," Mr Magazanik says.

Father Hackett was province leader while the case was running. Ms Everett recalls that during that period, he also wanted complaints about priests handled by canon law instead of civil law.

"We had a discussion or quite a disagreement about [it] I said, 'Stephen, you like everyone in Australia are bound by civil law and criminal law'," Ms Everett says.

The allegations against Father Fyfe were hidden from the judge and led to Mr Magazanik's client losing his case.

Father Fyfe declined to comment to 7.30.

"Rather than be open about it, they concealed it and told the judge that their star witness … was a witness of truth and credit," Mr Magazanik says.

The case was appealed and thrown out of court when this was discovered. MSC eventually paid Mr Clifford an out of court financial settlement.

Mr Clifford was awarded extra so-called "indemnity costs" by the Victorian Court of Appeal, which are awarded as a penalty by the court in exceptional circumstances.

The reason the court gave in this case was the Fyfe documents 'might have affected the judge's assessment of the credibility and reliability of the evidence of Father Fyfe and of his knowledge, perception and appreciation' of the conduct of the other students, and of [the alleged abusers], and their relationships with students'.

Mr Magazanik told 7.30 this indicated the Missionaries' behaviour was "unacceptable".

"In ordering the Missionaries to pay more of Mr Clifford's costs than usual, the Court of Appeal recognised that the Missionaries derailed Mr Clifford's trial and turned it into a legal debacle. Such a debacle that it could only be cured by a new trial," he says.

"That's the highest court in Victoria saying the Missionaries conduct was unacceptable and, two years later, the Missionaries have never explained why they kept the details of Fyfe's shameful behaviour from Mr Clifford."

The Missionaries of the Sacred Heart, who were now defending a workplace bullying action by Ms Jackman, then turned on her, alleging she was responsible for leaking the information about Father Fyfe.

"Meta Jackman never leaked anything to us," Mr Magazanik says.

"I've never had any communication with Meta Jackman through the whole process of this trial and subsequently.

Ms Everett says the decision to blame Ms Jackman without evidence was "abhorrent".

"It's really a shocking thing to do, to blame a young woman who was a very competent, professional young woman and to blame her for something she didn't do is abhorrent," Ms Everett says.

Over many months, the order persisted with allegations that Ms Jackman leaked.

She had an existing arrangement to work from home and take documents to assist her, but MSC now accused her of misappropriating those documents, and took the case right up to the Supreme Court.

At the last moment, MSC dropped the allegations and Ms Jackman agreed by a consent order to return the documents — which she had offered from the outset.

Ms Jackman is now responsible for her own costs, which she has no capacity to pay.

"I think it was designed to wear Meta down, to make her stop bringing any further complaints against them, to get rid of her, to silence her, and to cause her pain and loss," Ms Snelling says.

"That appears to me to have been an agenda of racking up and delaying proceedings to rack up legal fees, which could financially bankrupt her.

Ms Jackman's husband wrote to the Archbishop of Sydney, Anthony Fisher, asking for help and that he request MSC to suspend Father Hackett, but nothing happened. Archbishop Fisher declined to comment while the legal case is ongoing.

Ms Shearman wrote to every Catholic body she could think of — including the MSC headquarters in Rome and the Pope's representative in Australia, but none took action.

Even Australian Catholic Safeguarding Limited, the body set up after the child abuse Royal Commission, told Ms Jackman that it could not help because MSC would not approve the investigation.

"The system that was put in place following the Royal Commission that everybody signed up to still means that victims will not be heard and that no lessons have been learned," Ms Shearman says.

The saga has led both Ms Jackman and Ms Snelling to abandon their lifelong commitment to the Catholic Church.

"I'm just so disgusted by the behaviour that I've lost my faith," Ms Snelling says.

Father Hackett is still the MSC province leader. Ms Jackman is left financially broken, psychologically distressed and unable to work.

Ms Jackman wants ordinary Catholics to know what their Church is doing to victims in court.

"I would say the Catholic Church is not possibly what you think it is, what it purports to be," she says.

"It's causing a lot of damage to a lot of people out there."

Watch 7.30, Mondays to Thursdays 7:30pm on ABC iview and ABC TV