AUSTRALIA
The Australian
AAP May 17, 2013
CATHOLIC Church officials have been likened to outlaw motorcycle gangs, drug cartels and people smugglers in an explosive speech delivered at a legal conference in Victoria.
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.
“They seek to replace due process of civil and criminal law, while not being open for public scrutiny and accountability,” he said.
Dr Keon-Cohen said the church’s refusal to recognise assault as a crime first and not merely a sin amounted to it putting Catholic doctrine before the law of the land.
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