AUSTRALIA
Damaso Times
05/30/20130
CATHOLIC clergy commit six times as much abuse as those in the rest of the churches combined, ”and that’s a conservative figure”, a child protection expert says. Patrick Parkinson, a Sydney University law professor, told the state inquiry into how the churches handle sex abuse yesterday that the figures for the Catholic Church were strikingly out of proportion.
He proposed a 12-month amnesty from charges of perverting the course of justice if the church opened all its files on offenders alive and dead, but said those involved in cover-ups would have to resign.
Earlier, Victoria Police Deputy Commissioner Graham Ashton set the inquiry’s opening day alight with more broadsides against the Catholic Church’s systemic obstruction of police inquiries over five decades.
He said police had statistics for sexual offences by clergy and church workers since January 1956, uncovering ”shocking” figures: 2110 offences against 519 victims, overwhelmingly perpetrated by Catholic priests and mostly against boys aged 11 or 12. But in all that time the church had not reported a single crime to police.
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