AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald
Opinion
Judy Courtin
The Catholic Church’s sincerity must be challenged when it says it is putting abuse victims first.
FACING the Truth is the title of the Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne’s submission to State Parliament’s inquiry into the handling of child abuse by churches and others. The title also becomes the leitmotif of a church press release on the submission – that the church of today has been ”open about the horrific abuse that has occurred in Victoria and elsewhere” and ”we put the child first”.
What is designed to look like a confession and a genuine mea maxima culpa, is nothing but unholy PR spin.
First, consider the numbers. Archbishop Denis Hart claims about 620 cases of child abuse relating to crimes committed over the past 80 years have been upheld by the church in Victoria. This does not reflect the true number. According to the Victorian Law Reform Commission, a maximum of 10 per cent of people who were sexually assaulted as children will ever report those crimes to police. Whether more or fewer people will report to the police than the church, we don’t know. But broadly this figure means we have more than 6000 victims of Catholic clergy sex abuse in this state.
Second, the church claims that by ”facing the truth” it is being open about the horrific abuse. If this were so, the church would, today, hand to police all its secret archives holding thousands of documents relating to decades of clergy sex offences and their cover-ups. On this latter point the press release is silent. The church instead hides this evidence.
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