AUSTRALIA
The Age
April 30, 2013
Barney Zwartz
Religion editor, The Age.
An inquiry into sexual abuse has been told a Catholic Church spokesman made comments that were inappropriate, disingenuous and possibly in contempt of Parliament.
The deputy chairman of the inquiry, Victorian state MP Frank McGuire, criticised the church for taking an ”umbrella” approach at the inquiry but said it did not do so when discussing compensation or remedies.
”Before you’ve even come before the inquiry it looks as though the church is trying to minimise” the abuse problem, Mr McGuire said at the inquiry, held on Monday in Ballarat.
Criticising remarks by Father Shane Mackinlay that clergy sexual abuse coincided with the social and moral collapse of the 1960s and ’70s, including an attempt to lower the age of consent to 12, Mr McGuire said: ”Is the church going to try to blame society?”
Brother Tim Graham, the head of the Hospitallers, Order of St John of God, denied earlier evidence by victims group Broken Rites that there were paedophile rings in the order that gang-raped children, and that a child died after being thrown down stairs, but admitted there had been ”deplorable and indefensible” abuse of vulnerable children in homes formerly run by the order.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.