AUSTRALIA
Herald Sun
NSW church child abuse inquiry winds up public hearings – Catholic church thought they could ‘cure’ abusers
AUSTRALIA’S Catholic bishops could not believe that a “man of God” could be a pedophile, the NSW church child abuse inquiry was told yesterday.
When allegations of sexual abuse by priests and clergy began to flood out with mandatory reporting laws in the late 1980s, Father John Usher said the church hierarchy still thought that pedophiles could be “cured” with therapy.
He said the bishops took some convincing that even if a pedophile priest or religious brother said he was sorry, he was likely to do it again.
“We had to convince church leaders that they had to come to terms with this,” Father John Usher said.
He said it had been a steep learning curve to understand the way pedophiles operated.
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