AUSTRALIA
The Tablet
15 November 2013 by Mark Brolly
The Catholic Church’s institutions, schools and parishes gave perpetrators the opportunity to exploit vulnerable children in their care for decades and its early response to child abuse in its ranks “continued to conceal rather than expose criminal child abuse in the organisation”, a Victorian parliamentary report has found.
Betrayal of Trust, the report of the Inquiry into the Handling of Child Abuse by Religious and Other Non-Government Organisations by Parliament’s Family and Community Development Committee, said there had been “substantial criminal child abuse” in the Church over a long period of time, perpetrated by priests and other members of religious orders in Victoria.
“A culture existed in religious organisations that allowed for the occurrence of systemic criminal child abuse,” it said.
“The initial formal response to criminal child abuse that the Catholic Church in Victoria and in Australia more broadly adopted in the early 1990s was influenced by its previous approach. The response continued to conceal rather than expose criminal child abuse in the organisation.
“There has been a substantial body of credible evidence presented to the Inquiry and ultimately concessions made by senior representatives of religious bodies, including the Catholic Church, that they had taken steps with the direct objective of concealing wrongdoing.”
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