AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald
December 11, 2013
Catherine Armitage
Senior Writer
The Catholic Archbishop of Brisbane has admitted to “spectacular bungling” and “drastic failure” in dealing with a child sex abuse victim and flagged his willingness to revisit cases where victims’ needs have not been met.
Archbishop Mark Coleridge said it was wrong that insurers and lawyers had determined how much victims were paid out. His archdiocese had $52 million from which he was prepared to draw for victim payouts.
‘‘In the end, I [as archbishop] decide whether a sum conforms to the criteria of justice and compassion’’.
In the strongest statements yet by a senior Australian Catholic Church official about the church’s mishandling of sex abuse claims, Archbishop Coleridge said a “tsunami” of child sexual abuse allegations had caught bishops and other officials “like rabbits in a headlight”.
The failures of the Towards Healing protocol, in use since 1997, meant other ways of dealing with victim complaints needed to be explored “if we are serious about coming to the aid of victims”, the archbishop told the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.
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