AUSTRALIA
Crikey
JAMES ROSE | MAY 22, 2013
Child sexual abuse is now in the headlines, where it should be, but is it just the Church to blame? An IshMash on three watershed docos that offer answers.
Somewhere in Melbourne today in the back offices of the Catholic Church’s HQ, Archbishop Denis Hart must have his head in his hands. It’s hard to know whether that’s because he truly feels the power of the abuse his organisation has instituted, or because it’s happened on his watch and has become a growing pile of sorry business on his desk. His shaky performance in front of the Victorian Parliamentary Inquiry into state-wide institutional child abuse this week has ensured the Catholic Church is now under the kind of spotlight that makes people sweat and turn pale. But, it also emphasises the darkness around it.
Three documentaries that have aired in the last 12 months have all worked to flick the switch of the very harsh lights of public investigations here and elsewhere. Two BBC investigations into child sex abuse were recently nominated in the documentary section of the T-for-Television part of the BAFTAs earlier this month. Another, run on Australian TV, had a hand in prompting a Royal Commission into abuses of children here.
The BBC’s “The Shame of the Catholic Church” originally run in Ireland on “This World” on May 5th 2012, was the winner of the BAFTA TV documentary category, awarded earlier this month. Reporter Darragh McIntyre traces the movements of a few notorious paedophiles hiding behind the Church’s walls of trust in devoutly Catholic Donegal and beyond. Reprobates like former priests Eugene Green and Brendan Smith abused both boys and girls, in some cases in the sacristy behind a Virgin Mary statue in a local church.
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