AUSTRALIA
National Catholic Reporter
Stephen Crittenden | Dec. 14, 2013
SYDNEY Archbishop Mark Coleridge’s statement to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse on Wednesday about the mishandling of child sexual abuse could be the strongest a serving Australian bishop has made.
Describing the sexual abuse scandal as a “tsunami that blew up out of nowhere,” he said bishops and heads of religious orders had been caught like “rabbits in headlights” when confronted by sexual abuse cases in the 1990s.
Coleridge was appointed archbishop of Brisbane in May 2012 after spending five years as archbishop of Canberra-Goulburn. He is also a member of the Truth, Justice and Healing Council, set up to coordinate the Catholic church’s response to the Royal Commission.
Referring to the case of Joan Isaacs, who was abused as a schoolgirl in the 1960s by Brisbane priest Frank Derriman, Coleridge accused his own predecessor, Archbishop John Bathersby, of “spectacular bungling.”
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