AUSTRALIA
The Age
November 19, 2013
Barney Zwartz, Religion Editor
Victoria Police evidence about child sexual abuse that savaged the Catholic Church was unfair and an attempt to distance itself from its own failures, a state government report says.
It took 16 years – and problems becoming public – before police paid attention to the fundamental problems in the way the church in Melbourne dealt with complaints – a process to which police had originally agreed, the report says.
Betrayal of Trust, the report of the parliamentary inquiry into how the churches handled child sexual abuse, was tabled last week.
In testimony to the inquiry last October, police accused the church of deliberately impeding their investigations into child abuse, dissuading victims from reporting to police, failing to engage with police, protecting sexual offenders and alerting suspects of allegations against them.
Police also attacked the Melbourne Response independent commissioner, Peter O’Callaghan, QC, and complained that not one case had been referred to them.
However, Mr O’Callaghan defended himself vigorously when he gave evidence, saying the church and police had signed an agreement on how the Melbourne Response church protocol would work before he was appointed, and police had not told him of any dissatisfaction until the inquiry was announced.
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.