AUSTRALIA
The Australian
DAN BOX THE AUSTRALIAN DECEMBER 11, 2013
THE Catholic Church’s insurance company instructed a bishop to delete an admission that church officials had been warned about a pedophile priest from a letter of apology sent to one of the man’s victims.
The company, Catholic Church Insurances, dominated the negotiation of abuse claims, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse heard yesterday, instructing clerics to deny liability and dictating the amount of compensation and even counselling offered in response.
On one occasion, the commission heard, the company was consulted on a 1999 letter sent to the victim of a Brisbane priest who claimed to be terminally ill and saying she “needed to have sex with him before he died”.
His victim, Joan Isaacs, had attempted to warn church officials about her abuse but was ignored, the commission heard, allowing the priest to abuse other children.
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