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Catholic Church Admits Grave Faults in Dealing with Australian Abuse Victims

By David Marr
The Guardian
October 3, 2013

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/03/catholic-church-grave-faults-abuse

Francis Sullivan the chief executive of the church's Truth Justice and Healing Council. Photograph: Julian Smith/AAP

The Catholic church has admitted grave faults in its dealings with victims of sex abuse by priests. The peak body that represents the church, the Truth Justice and Healing Council, has reported shoddy record-keeping, secrecy, inconsistent outcomes and lack of effective supervision of the dioceses and religious orders responsible for the care of victims.

These admissions come in a submission to the royal commission into

institutional responses to child sex abuse, which is soon to examine the church's Towards Healing process that offers care and compensation to victims of priests everywhere in Australia but the parishes of Melbourne.

"The submission presents to the royal commission a warts and all approach that outlines the strengths but also recognises how Towards Healing operates," Francis Sullivan, the chief executive of the Truth, Justice and Healing Council, which was set up last year to co-ordinate the church's response to the royal commission, told Guardian Australia.

"We need to put in place much more rigorous, contemporary best-practice governance arrangements including accountability for all church authorities about the operation of Towards Healing, the safeguards that are in the Catholic church for children, the measures to prevent sex abuse and the achievement of standards across the whole church."

The submission is no more than a statement of good intentions. No changes have been made to church practice. The council has yet to begin wresting agreement from the 31 dioceses and one hundred or so religious bodies that now administer Towards Healing across Australia.

So poor is the record-keeping that the council is struggling to provide the royal commission with information on the working of Towards Healing since it began operating 15 years ago.

"Nothing has been centrally organised and insisted upon," said Sullivan. "The various church authorities have kept their own databases and compiled them in their own fashion. And 'databases' in some cases may be a glorified term."

Sullivan acknowledges that this might lead people to suspect the church is trying to hide the scope of the problem of clerical sex abuse, but he insists the council will be able to give the royal commission the data it needs.

"When the royal commission sends notices into the Catholic church to produce documents they are inundated with documents," he said. "I think the Catholic church keeps more records than most institutions."

The submission reveals that most victims approaching Towards Healing now want compensation. "We have to read the signs of the times," said Sullivan.

"If that is where people are moving in their needs then we need to respond accordingly."

As well as a national body to supervise the working of Towards Healing, the council proposes the church establishes a standalone tribunal to handle compensation claims.

Towards Healing has been widely criticised by lawyers and victims' advocates for the very low sums paid to victims. But the submission makes clear that the church has no plans either to lift payments or clear the hurdles it continues to place in the way of victims wishing to take their cases to court.

"Issues to do with whether the church can be sued … are clearly going to be coming on the agenda in the royal commission," said Sullivan. "We will wait till they arise there and see where we go."

Nor do the 200-plus pages of the vast submission raise the possibility that the church might, at last, conduct a systematic investigation into the extent of paedophilia in its ranks.

Nevertheless, Sullivan sees the submission published on Thursday as promising the most significant overhaul yet of the church's approach to clerical sexual abuse "in the interests of giving the broader community the confidence that the church is addressing sex abuse allegations and claims appropriately; in the interests of consistence for victims and those damaged; and in the interests of restoring the confidence of the Catholic community that things are being done in a contemporary practice best way".

 

 

 

 

 




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