AUSTRALIA
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The actions of the Lismore diocese of the Catholic Church came under scrutiny at the Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse today. The case study used was the abuse of Jennifer Ingham by priest, Paul Rex Brown (who died in 2005), and her treatment by the “Towards Healing” process, set up by the church to deal with abuse allegations. Ms Ingham said she suffered bulimia, had ongoing psychiatric problems and attempted suicide.
Previously, the enquiry has heard of a case in the Brisbane Archdiocese, led by Mark Coleridge (see previous posting), who is a member of the “Truth, Justice and Healing Council”, the PR Unit set up by the Catholic Church to handle the fall-out of the Royal Commission. Coleridge, given he was a witness, should have resigned his position with the church’s PR Unit, beforehand.
The bishop of Lismore, Geoffrey Jarrett, apologized earlier this year to Ms. Ingham, for not being available for her “towards Healing” process. Ms Ingham said she wanted Jarrett to answer some questions: “Why in the Diocese of Lismore, then across all of Australia, then the world, why not one good fearless person could have stepped out against the depravities and wrongs that existed…why no one in the church spoke out against turning a blind eye to the abusers and moving clergy from town to town to protect them and the church from being discovered….Why did nothing happen when I finally acknowledged my abuse by Brown to the church?”.
When she finally met bishop Jarrett, Ms. Ingham told him she thought it was “that they were given a direction by the Vatican to bury evidence and lie”. Jarrett’s response seemed to be that “He was shocked by this and tried to answer her “but to me it was just noise. He said he could not understand how a man of faith ‘held her captive’ for four years and could not fathom the corruptness in the church in recent years…I felt in reality Jarrett had no answer … he simply did not know.”
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