Royal commission into child sex abuse: Victims suffered ‘profound spiritual damage’

By Carleen Frost
Courier-Mail
February 06, 2017

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Father Thomas P. Doyle, an American priest, gave evidence at today’s royal commission. Photo by John Fotiadis

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse began yesterday.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse resumed today. Photo by Jeremy Piper

The statistics revealed during the royal commission yesterday.

Father Thomas P. Doyle was the first witness to appear at today’s royal commission hearing in Sydney and has told the public gallery those forgotten survivors had suffered “profound spiritual damage”.

Dr Doyle was one of the first people to bring attention to the rise of sex abuse in church ranks across American in the early 1980s, and has spent decades ministering to victims and their families.

“I will say that one of the massive holes in the Roman Catholic Church’s approach to this issue still today is the failure to completely comprehend the depth of the spiritual damage that is done to their victims, to their families, especially their parents, to their friends and to the community itself,” Dr Doyle told the commission today.

“There seems to be no ability to even ask the proper questions.

“I have never seen anything coming out of the Holy See dealing with the spiritual damage.

“All I’ve seen is ‘Get them to go back to church’, which is nuts. That’s crazy.

“I’ve seen a lot of people, both priests and religious, who have tried to figure out how to deal with this and bringing aid and comfort and support to the victims.

“But as an institution, I have seen nothing.”

Dr Doyle went on to recount some of the hundreds of victims and their families who he had listened to over the years.

He broke down as he spoke about a young boy who had come to him for help.

“I met a 10-year-old with his family,” he said.

“And when I looked into his face I still see it — it was empty.

“And that moment changed my life.

“Parents were simple, good decent people who could not comprehend why they were being treated the way they were by the church.

“They could not understand why this man had been shifted from one place to another to another and nothing was done.

“I had no answers.

“But that was the first of I can’t count the number of victims I’ve met.

“The youngest was that boy, who was I think 10 or 11 at the time.

“The oldest was a woman who at the time was 91, who had waited until she was 88 or 89 to disclose what had happened to her when she was 12 and what prompted her to disclose was when her own daughter, at the age of 60, disclosed what had happened to her.”