Victoria Criticised for Delaying Decision on Reporting Child Abuse Heard in Confession

By Melissa Davey
The Guardian
July 11, 2018

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/jul/11/victoria-criticised-for-delaying-decision-on-reporting-child-abuse-heard-in-confession

The Victorian government has been criticised for delaying its decision on whether to abolish the seal of confessional for disclosures of child sexual abuse, in its response to the recommendations of the royal commission.

On Wednesday the state government issued its response to the royal commission’s 409 recommendations, 317 of which apply to Victoria. The state’s attorney general, Martin Pakula, said the government had accepted 128 recommendations, accepted 165 recommendations in principle, and would need to further consider another 24.

Abolishing the seal of confessional for any disclosures of child sexual abuse was one of those recommendations still under consideration, Pakula told ABC radio.

“It needs a degree of national agreement,” he said.

“There are a range of jurisdictions, including the Commonwealth, who need to work together on this ... because the Uniform Evidence Act provision is just not something that we can move on alone.”

However South Australia, Tasmania, the ACT and Western Australia have all made moves to require the clergy to report any child abuse disclosed during confession to police. From October, priests in South Australia face a $10,000 fine if they fail to report confessions of child sex abuse.

Co-founder of the Care Leavers Australasia Network Leonie Sheedy, whose organisation supports those abused in out-of-home care, said Victoria was “still putting the church ahead of children”.

“I can not believe it,” she told Guardian Australia.

“I don’t know why they need more time to consider this recommendation. We have had five years of horrific abuse stories heard by the royal commission, and yet apparently this recommendation is still up for discussion. How much more time do you need when it comes to children who have been abused?”

The code of canon law states: “The sacramental seal is inviolable; therefore it is absolutely forbidden for a confessor to betray in any way a penitent in words or in any manner and for any reason.” Those who break the seal face automatic excommunication from the church.

But the landmark child sexual abuse royal commission found this law contributed to the failure of the Catholic church to protect children and report or punish perpetrators within church institutions. “We recommend that canon law be amended so that the ‘pontifical secret’ does not apply to any aspect of allegations or canonical disciplinary processes relating to child sexual abuse,” the report said.

Australian Lawyers Alliance spokesman Dr Andrew Morrison, who has represented abuse victims, said he understood the “outrage” from abuse survivors that canon law was being protected in some states.

“It should be the case that any serious breach of [criminal] law should be required to be reported to police as a matter of principle,” he said.

“However, I doubt many priests would comply with such an obligation in practice in any way. However, if a child subsequently comes forward and says they disclosed abuse in confession and the priest did nothing, then that priest should suffer the same fate as Archbishop Philip Wilson.”

In May Wilson, 67, was found guilty of concealing child sexual abuse, becoming the most senior Catholic in the world to be convicted of the crime. He was sentenced to 12 months’ imprisonment with a non-parole period of six months.

Senior figures in the Catholic Church have criticised those states and territories which have made moves to abolish the seal of confession. In the most recent edition of the Australasian Catholic Record the Archbishop of Sydney, Anthony Fisher, wrote that “circumventing, circumscribing or breaking the seal in the ways proposed permissible, this would not serve to protect a single child: rather, it would help to ensure that such matters were never raised in confession”.

“An opportunity would then be lost to counsel perpetrator or victim to do what is necessary to prevent recurrence,” he wrote. “Without the seal, children would be less safe, the integrity of the precious sacrament of reconciliation undermined, and religious liberty dealt a lethal blow.”