AUSTRALIA
The Guardian
Helen Davidson
theguardian.com, Wednesday 11 December 2013
Senior members of the Catholic clergy were “like rabbits caught in a headlight” when Towards Healing was rolled out in 1996, and as a result placed too much trust in lawyers and insurers, the archbishop of Brisbane told the royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse on Wednesday.
Archbishop Mark Coleridge, who has been in the position since May 2012, told the public hearing that “the buck stops with the archbishop”, and particularly in the case of sexual abuse victim Joan Isaacs, there was a “lack of oversight” on the part of the church’s Brisbane hierarchy which led to insurers and lawyers playing a “damaging” role in the dealings of Towards Healing with a victim of child sexual abuse.
Coleridge said while Towards Healing was “in one sense” done very carefully, it was also a process conducted “on the run, and by people who were learning as they went.”
When Towards Healing was first established to respond to accusations of abuse by clergy, senior church members including bishops “didn’t know how to respond,” Coleridge said.
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