The Importance of the Newcastle Hearings of the Royal Commission

By Ian Kirkwood
Newcastle Herald
September 9, 2016

http://www.theherald.com.au/story/4153735/making-history-at-the-royal-commission/

THE Royal Commission’s hearings into the Maitland-Newcastle Catholic diocese have concluded, and its Newcastle Anglican hearings resume in Sydney on Wednesday, November 16.

After watching 16 of the commission’s 18 sitting days at Newcastle Court House (I had two days off to cover the ICAC Operation Spicer findings) it is clear to me that while the details of every act being examined were different – obviously enough – the underlying pattern was the same, no matter if the perpetrator was a priest or a brother, an Anglican or a Catholic.

These were men with gigantically over-inflated self-importance – thanks largely to the pedestal of “clericalism” – whose gross sexual perversions were either ignored or covered-up by bureaucracies whose instincts and actions made the reputations of themselves and their organisations the cornerstone of their responses (if any) when forced for whatever reason to account for themselves. And while the commission heard its share of apologies from various high-ranking church figures during the Newcastle hearings, it seemed to me that at least some of the contrition was grudging, at best. A good example of this came two Fridays ago when the chairman of the commission, Justice Peter McClellan, put it to Bishop Bill Wright that there were some Catholics “who don’t really accept that the spotlight . . . should have shone on the church to the extent that it has”.

I doubt I was the only one expecting the bishop to say the spotlight was warranted. Instead, he said: “I myself, your honour, you know, wonder – it sometimes seems that so many of the case studies are delving into matters of 30 and 40 years ago and I kind of wonder where the more contemporary spotlight should be falling.”

He had “this awful misgiving that there’s an awful lot of stuff going on out there now and we spend so much time on decades ago”. Justice McClellan saw things differently: “Thank you for that, but we have been charged with, and the community wanted the church, your church, amongst others, to face up to what happened in the past in a public way.” It was, as they say, a telling exchange.

On Thursday, Justice McClellan said he intended one of the commission’s final hearings to investigate the “why” question: in other words, why child abuse has been the problem it has. On Tuesday, the commission heard that a well-known Newcastle Catholic cleric had justified things in 2012 by saying: “It’s been going on forever. The Romans had their little boys, the Greeks had their little boys and the English aristocrats had their little boys."

And he’s right, as even a cursory examination of history will show. But while we are cautioned against looking at ancient practices through modern eyes, I have no doubt that the boys shown as willing servants of old bearded men in 2400-year-old Greek pottery were just as emotionally damaged by the experience as their latter-day Hunter counterparts. Especially given the church’s supposed role as moral arbiter.

Before I finish, I need to apologise for a bad error in Friday’s front-page report, in which I wrongly called Brother Dominic by the name Brother Benedict. It was not my best work. And it was all the more galling because just hours before, Justice McClellan had thanked the Newcastle Herald – and by that we should read Joanne McCarthy above all others – for its role in helping create the Royal Commission. Those brave souls who stepped forward to tell it their stories have made, and are making, history.