Francis Sullivan, Ceo, Church's Truth Justice Healing Council

By Tony Jones
ABC - Lateline
October 3, 2013

http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2013/s3861996.htm

TONY JONES, PRESENTER: To discuss the story by Steve Cannane and the Church's planned reforms to its Towards Healing program for victims of abuse is the CEO of the Catholic Church's Truth, Justice and Healing Council, Francis Sullivan, who joins us from our Parliament House studio.

Francis Sullivan, thanks for being there.

FRANCIS SULLIVAN, CEO, TRUTH, JUSTICE AND HEALING COUNCIL: Pleasure, Tony.

TONY JONES: Have you had a chance to read the memorandum and the documents that we sent you?

FRANCIS SULLIVAN: My office has, but I haven't personally, but I pretty well understand what they're saying.

TONY JONES: You've been briefed on them?

FRANCIS SULLIVAN: Mm-hm.

TONY JONES: OK. What does it say about the mindset of the Church back in 2003 that believed it had in place a secret agreement with the police which, as it turned out, was in breach of the Crimes Act?

FRANCIS SULLIVAN: Tony, as you mentioned earlier, we've got a submission going into the Royal Commission and we actually address this fundamental tension. People can turn up to the Church and make it clear, as victims, that they don't want the information going forward to police. That's one condition. Obviously the Church wants to tell the police about alleged crimes. There's a real tension there. And it seems to me that these MOUs were trying to address that tension. Listening to the presentation this evening, it is extraordinary though that there would be some veto on information from the accused going forward and it seems bizarre to me that that would be the case.

TONY JONES: Well in fact that was not in the Church's memorandum of understanding, but one written by the police themselves which never came into operation. But the original one by the Church was examined by the police commander of the Child Protection Squad who looked at it, this memorandum of understanding, and said it's in direct conflict with the Crimes Act. Do you agree that that has serious implications?

FRANCIS SULLIVAN: That's certainly worrying, Tony. The bit I know about the history of this - not so much the MOU, but the tension - is that by May, 2003, the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference, in their minutes, which the Royal Commission has, made it clear that when a person approaches the Church and says, "Look, I don't want this information going to the police," the Church would make it clear that they will be sending the information to the police. That's a resolution from the bishops. So this seems at real odds to me. And, frankly, in our submission, we've made it clear there's a tension, but also, we want the Royal Commission to discuss this and to explore it, because at the end of the day, what we've said in our submission is it's high time for the Church to get out of all of the adjudication type processes - you know, investigation, assessment, determination. We want the Church to be involved in pastoral support, ongoing assistance and obviously financial settlement, but let's leave all that assessment and investigation and ultimate determination of financial assessment to an outside body.

TONY JONES: Alright. We're going to come to that in a moment, but let's stick with this. This is history ...

FRANCIS SULLIVAN: Sure.

TONY JONES: ... and it's very likely, it seems to me, to end up before the Royal Commission. One of the key Church officials who was dealing with the police at that time has told us the Church assumed this memorandum was operational, that it was practising in fact under its provisions, that it had an understanding from the police, that it was approved. Now doesn't that raise very serious issues about any cases that were examined with this overpinning memorandum of understanding in place?

FRANCIS SULLIVAN: I agree with you, Tony. I think these are serious questions and it's interesting that we can't get a spokesperson for the police on tonight. May be good reasons for that. And clearly people involved in the Church back in 2003 also need to explain what was the thinking. All I can say is that there is a tension between people coming forward who don't want their privacy in any way breached for a whole lot of reasons, which I'm sure you'd know from the past. The thing is, there is also an obligation on all institutions - and it won't just be the Church here, I'd imagine, that have this tension - to get this information to the police in order to protect the community. We get that.

TONY JONES: Yeah. Well I understand that, but of course that's not the only element of the memorandum of understanding that the Church wrote. It also included a provision which stopped the police getting hold of information held by the Church, unless the police went to the extraordinary measures of getting a court order for them to see those documents. So, there was in place in the MOU a system that actually stopped the police getting information from the Church.

FRANCIS SULLIVAN: And our perspective today on that, Tony, would be as a council that that seems to be a residue of an attitude in the past by the Church that was too protective of itself. And ...

TONY JONES: And we're talking about the past here; we're not talking about that long ago now.

FRANCIS SULLIVAN: No.

TONY JONES: I mean, this is 2003.

FRANCIS SULLIVAN: Correct.

TONY JONES: And because we don't know how long this understanding was operational, it could've been years, could've been going on for years. It could be a whole lot of cases that were dealt with with this flawed system in place.

FRANCIS SULLIVAN: And that's why I keep coming back to the fact that it would be encouraging if the Royal Commission does look at this whole process. I agree with you.

TONY JONES: So this secret memorandum, you believe, should go before the Royal Commission, even though it's only just been uncovered by Freedom of Information?

FRANCIS SULLIVAN: Oh, look, the Royal Commission should see everything about the history of the whole child sex abuse scandal in the Church and elsewhere. I mean, this is the whole time for us, isn't it, to get the truth out, so that we as a community can understand what's happened and what needs to happen in the future?

TONY JONES: So have you taken steps to discover who actually wrote this memorandum? I know you haven't had a lot of time, but would you consider that to be part of your brief to do that?

FRANCIS SULLIVAN: No, Tony. Look, I think the one important point here is that the times of the Church investigating itself about what it's done are over. I mean, it's really important that when we have public scrutiny with the Royal Commission at foot now, let it happen that way so that the community can have confidence that there's some objective assessment going on.

TONY JONES: Except you've been charged, your body has been charged with going out there and explaining to the public how the Church actually dealt with child sex abuse.

FRANCIS SULLIVAN: Sure.

TONY JONES: If this is one of the key elements of how they did it, surely you're going to go to the various diocese that are involved and ask them how this happened.

FRANCIS SULLIVAN: That's a fair comment, but probably by - not tonight.

TONY JONES: No. But OK - are you planning to go and do that, though? I mean, would you require answers of the Sydney Diocese where this happened?

FRANCIS SULLIVAN: Yes.

TONY JONES: So you'd be speaking to them tomorrow, I dare say?

FRANCIS SULLIVAN: Well, I hope so, Tony, but certainly soon. I mean, we would like to know what's at the bottom of it, what's the thinking and so on. And as you said rightly, we only heard about these MOUs this afternoon.

TONY JONES: So, do you worry that things like this have been concealed from you?

FRANCIS SULLIVAN: Well, anything like this which gets dropped on you at the last minute is also a concern. We've been examining pretty closely what we think has been the history and the development of Towards Healing and I take your point that this has occurred in that period and obviously we want to get to the bottom of it, but I would like to stress when push comes to shove, it's important that something like the Royal Commission also examines these things so that the community can have confidence in an objective assessment about what's gone on.

TONY JONES: OK. Earlier today we learnt that your council has proposed a radical shakeup of the Towards Healing process, which the Church set up in 1996, I think it was, to deal with cases of child sex abuse by the clergy. What exactly are you saying must change?

FRANCIS SULLIVAN: Well, Tony, back in '96-'97 when they started Towards Healing, there was a seismic shift away from what was previously a fairly protective protocol by the Church - more worried about its image than the needs of victims, and the change was to make the victim the centre of the protocol, a pastoral response. Over time, there are a number of things that have occurred. Increasingly people are now not wanting to use Towards Healing. They want alternative dispute resolution processes, civil litigation. Sometimes, the Church's lawyers and lawyers on the other side have contaminated the process and we now believe it's time for a separation of the two, as I said just a little earlier. The long-term impacts of sex abuse on individuals are far better known now than they were 20 years ago. And for churches particularly, they need to be there to support people for the long term. And that's a pastoral response and sometimes that will mean material support - paying school fees or whatever. That is separate to a financial settlement. And a Church has a responsibility about financial settlement - don't get me wrong.

TONY JONES: They have a responsibility, but I think the way we've seen that operate, the Church's own insurance company - often you talk about lawyers getting in the way - the Church's own insurance company often got involved in these negotiations and surely that presented a major conflict of interest.

FRANCIS SULLIVAN: That's our understanding, too, Tony and we can see that now from our work up on this submission and we can see it from documents that the Towards Healing in theory is a fantastic process. On the ground, it's been variable in its outcomes. It sometimes depended on where you lived in the country determined the outcome you got. There's not a lot of transparency, not a lot of accountability, not a lot of independent oversight. These days, those characteristics are part of a best practice governance system. That's what the Royal Commission is on about. So we're suggesting a clear separation of the pastoral from the financial settlement. Now, more to that, the financial settlement may well be something that the Royal Commission looks at themselves and says, "We need a national compensation system." We think we shouldn't wait that long. We certainly will comply. But in the meantime, we'll be looking at setting up a independent arrangements for compensation.

TONY JONES: OK. Briefly on that score, if the system itself was deeply flawed, as you've suggested, indeed as you found it was, doesn't that mean that a lot of these cases are going to now be looked at again by the independent commissioner and it could be that a lot of people who got small amounts of compensation or no compensation could apply for much bigger compensation payouts?

FRANCIS SULLIVAN: Tony, the submission we put in and the - if you like, the reform proposals are concepts at this point. We don't have any meat on the bones of how anything will work or what the rules will be for this, that or the other.

TONY JONES: We're nearly out of time, but does that mean there's no limits on the amount of money the Church might have to pay out?

FRANCIS SULLIVAN: There's no decisions on any of that yet and we're to work that up for 2014, so I imagine I'll be back here then talking to you about it.

TONY JONES: Indeed, but it could cost billions of dollars, couldn't it?

FRANCIS SULLIVAN: Well the Church has obviously put a lot of money in at this stage and it's not shirking from its responsibilities into the future. We're just talking about having a cleaner arrangement.

TONY JONES: Francis Sullivan, we thank you very much. It's never easy when you come on Lateline, i suspect, but we thank you very much for being there again to answer our questions.

FRANCIS SULLIVAN: Always happy to come on, Tony.

TONY JONES: Thank you.