Church Asks for Help from Irish Abuse Watchdog

By Barney Zwartz, Noel Towell
Brisbane Times
April 26, 2013

http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/national/church-asks-for-help-from-irish-abuse-watchdog-20130425-2ihj2.html

The head of the Catholic Church watchdog on clerical abuse in Ireland is to advise the Australian church about how well its abuse protocol is working.

Ian Elliott will visit Australia later this year to talk about lessons from the Irish experience and to help the church review its Towards Healing system, a spokesman said.

The Irish experience is a way to go that step further.

The National Committee for Professional Standards executive officer, Father Tim Brennan, said there was no external monitoring of how Towards Healing dealt with victims, and no way for the church to prove its systems were working.

''How does it get a clean bill of health?'' Father Brennan asked. ''At the moment, there's no mechanism to establish who does things well. The Irish experience is a way to go that step further.''

Mr Elliott has led the National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church in Ireland for the past six years, and has finished examining the records of 16 Irish dioceses and four religious orders.

He told the Irish Independent the other 10 would be finished by the end of the year and the 100-plus religious orders by 2015.

Father Brennan said the invitation was not related to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

Checks would include whether offenders were treated appropriately, and whether constraints imposed on them were sufficient and adhered to, Father Brennan said.