Royal commission: Archbishop Hart agrees terrible failure in handling abuse

ABC - PM
November 30, 2015

http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2015/s4362773.htm

TIM PALMER: The Catholic Archbishop of Melbourne has acknowledged his archdiocese failed to act on complaints of clerical abuse of children in the past.

Denis Hart told the child sex abuse royal commission there'd been a complete failure of process in many cases. He says his predecessors had been guilty of "passivity", although he excluded his immediate predecessor, George Pell, from that criticism.

Samantha Donovan reports.

SAMANTHA DONOVAN: The royal commission is examining the Melbourne's Archdiocese's handling of child sex abuse complaints against eight priests from the mid-80s to 1996.

The Archbishop of Melbourne, Denis Hart, told the commission today there had been a terrible failure to handle abuse in his archdiocese.

DENIS HART: There was such a respect that only the Archbishop could act, that this introduced a paralysis.

SAMANTHA DONOVAN: Some witnesses have told the commission the church's complex processes for removing priests from their duties are partly to blame for the inaction.

Senior counsel assisting the royal commission Gail Furness put that to Archbishop Hart.

GAIL FURNESS: Does the system of referral that you've described work, from your point of view, in protecting the citizens of Australia against priests who sexually abuse children?

DENIS HART: I believe the system is intended to protect people against these awful predators. I would hope that replies from Rome would come more quickly.

SAMANTHA DONOVAN: Royal commission chairman Peter McClellan.

PETER MCCLELLAN: Archbishop, it is said in part that the system that was instituted was designed to minimise the risk of scandal to the church.

DENIS HART: I would certainly respect that criticism.

PETER MCCLELLAN: Why do you think it's a valid criticism?

DENIS HART: Well it arises out of the whole situation in the '50s, '60s, '70s, where the good of the church was paramount.

PETER MCCLELLAN: Well, the church has known about priests getting up to these awful things for centuries, hasn't it?

DENIS HART: I'd have to say yes.

PETER MCCLELLAN: Yes. You have to say yes because it's true.

DENIS HART: Yes.

PETER MCCLELLAN: And the history over the centuries, going back a long time anyway, was an endeavour to keep knowledge that priests were doing these terrible things from the general public, wasn't it?

DENIS HART: Yes.

PETER MCCLELLAN: The church's structure, and the direction given to people like you as an archbishop, was to do what you could to keep it, as it were, in-house.

DENIS HART: I think the mentality was that way. And thank God it's changed.

(Crowd murmurs.)

GAIL FURNESS: Has it changed?

DENIS HART: Well certainly in my time we've done our level best and in Cardinal Pell's time, we've done our level best to try and address these matters, to provide relief for victims, to try and provide help.

SAMANTHA DONOVAN: The royal commission has heard the former archbishop of Melbourne, Frank Little, failed to remove paedophile priests from parishes. He was in office from the mid-70s to the mid-90s.

Senior counsel assisting the commission, Gail Furness, asked Denis Hart why the archbishop failed to act.

DENIS HART: I'd have to say that archbishop Little didn't like confrontation, and he didn't want to have it on his conscience that any action of his would have pushed a fellow out of the priesthood.

GAIL FURNESS: But he was happy to have it on his conscience that children were abused because he didn't act on those priests?

DENIS HART: I, I, I don't know that that was his intention, but I accept the assertion that you make.

GAIL FURNESS: Well it was undoubtedly the outcome, wasn't it?

DENIS HART: Yes.

GAIL FURNESS: There's no doubt about that, is there?

DENIS HART: No.

SAMANTHA DONOVAN: Archbishop Hart told the royal commission the archbishops and vicars- general who had preceded him in the archdiocese had been passive in their handling of clerical sexual abuse. But he excluded his immediate predecessor George Pell from that criticism.

DENIS HART: Well I think as archbishop he instituted the Melbourne Response and really made big changes.

GAIL FURNESS: So he's not responsible, in your view, from any passivity or inactivity?

DENIS HART: Not as far as I know. I have no knowledge of what he or another auxiliary bishop in archbishop Little's time, as what you'd say, your honour, how hard they knocked on the door - I just don't know.

SAMANTHA DONOVAN: The commission has heard gun-carrying paedophile priest Peter Searson was allowed to stay in his parish in south-eastern Melbourne in the '80s and '90s.

Gail Furness asked Archbishop Hart if George Pell had failed in that case.

GAIL FURNESS: Was the auxiliary bishop at the time, with responsibility for this region, also part of that complete failure?

DENIS HART: I don't know what he knew, and I don't know what he did, apart from what's in the documentation. So I'd have to say that that would have to be tested.

SAMANTHA DONOVAN: Archbishop Hart denied counsel assisting's suggestion he had deliberately refrained from referring to particular documents in his statement that related to George Pell's handling of the case of Father Peter Searson.

Archbishop Hart will continue his evidence to the royal commission tomorrow.

TIM PALMER: Samantha Donovan.