Abuse Victim Happy

By Danny Lannen
Geelong Advertiser
May 22, 2013

http://www.geelongadvertiser.com.au/article/2013/05/22/365548_news.html

Archbishop Denis Hart

SURVIVOR Chris Pianto sensed a welcome diluting of power as he watched Catholic Archbishop Denis Hart face Victoria's parliamentary inquiry into institutional sexual abuse.

Mr Pianto perceived panic at times in Archbishop Hart's responses to cross-examination and was pleased to hear parliamentary panel members give him orders rather than requests.

"I was really glad to see that they had that power to do that and that the church actually can be vulnerable," Mr Pianto said.

"They're not the most powerful people in the world. They can be put down by a parliamentary inquiry and probably even more seriously by royal commissioners.

"Also, now they'll be sharing the nightmares we've been through, now the tables are turned they might be the ones having the nightmares and panic attacks that we've been through and in a lot of cases still do."

Mr Pianto attended Monday's hearing with fellow Geelong abuse survivors Max Johnson and Joe Saric.

Archbishop Hart said at the hearing that in the past child sex abuse had been endemic in the Catholic Church in Melbourne. He said the church had been slow to act against pedophile priests, but ways had changed since the 1990s.

"The systemic issue was we were too slow to realise what was going on," Archbishop Hart said.

He said complaints had been covered up during the time Sir Thomas Frank Little was archbishop of Melbourne.

Mr Pianto, who suffered abuse across 2 1/2 years at the hands of a Catholic teacher who was also his football coach, said he was impressed by the committee's acute cross-examination.

Geelong St Mary's Catholic parish priest Father Kevin Dillon, a long-time critic of the church's handling of abuses, said yesterday any response made on behalf of the church was best judged by people who had suffered as a result of crimes "rightly described as appalling".

"Have these presentations and these words given them hope and comfort things will be better? But if they see them as more of the same, it just demonstrates there is much more to be done and much more re-thinking to be done," Fr Dillon said.

He questioned responsibility for offences resting with individual bishops if they were under instruction from Rome.

"My guess is that any bishop probably anywhere in the world at that time probably would have gone down a path very similar because that's certainly the way things were," Fr Dillon said.

"They were products of the culture of the church at the time and the church today has to take responsibility for ensuring that that culture is radically altered so the same things don't happen again."