AUSTRALIA
SBS
SOURCE: AAP
A lawyer says the Catholic Church and other organisations that contributed to child sex abuse problems should have to pay for the royal commission.
Catholic Church officials have been likened to the mafia, outlaw motorcycle gangs and drug cartels by a legal activist.
Lawyer and lobbyist Bryan Keon-Cohen said the church, currently at the centre of a royal commission into the handling of child sex abuse complaints, saw itself as above the law and resisted governmental responses to child sex abuse.
Dr Keon-Cohen, the president of community lobby group COIN (Commission of Inquiry Now), said the church’s own mechanisms for investigating abuse, such as Towards Healing and the Melbourne Response, were insufficient and objectionable.
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