AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald
December 14, 2013
Catherine Armitage
Senior Writer
‘I wanted to know 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, including turning a blind eye to the abusers and moving the clergy from town to town to protect them from being discovered?”
With this anguished plea, Jennifer Ingham gave shaking voice to questions at the heart of hearings of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in Sydney this week. Who takes responsibility? Who will lead?
In the strongest statement yet by a senior church leader on its mishandling of the crisis, Brisbane Archbishop Mark Coleridge told the commission on Wednesday there had been ”spectacular bungling” and ”drastic failure”. A ”tsunami” of child sexual abuse allegations had caught bishops and other officials ”like rabbits in a headlight”, he said. He cut through on the question other church witnesses dodged all week.
With mounting exasperation commission chair Peter McClellan had been asking whether the church as a whole should bear responsibility for the actions of individuals within it. In other words, should its great wealth not be available as compensation to the victims?
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