AUSTRALIA
Brisbane Times
Bill Farr
April 23, 2012
Opinion
On the matter of sex abuse by clergy, Denis Hart still doesn’t get it.
ON THIS page on Friday, the Archbishop of Melbourne, Denis Hart, defended the Catholic Church’s record in dealing with the ever-increasing fallout from decades of sexual abuse by clergy. He predicted the state parliamentary inquiry announced last week would find that his church has been ”fair” in its dealings with victims.
Sadly, from the outside, that is hard to accept.
I started school in the Catholic system in the early 1960s, and have followed – with more than a passing interest – the slow drip-feed of horrific stories of abuse as they have become public. It came close to home for me about three years ago with the exposing of a priest who, for a short time, was a family friend. It was a shock to realise that he was a serial abuser.
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