AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald
February 10, 2014
Cathy Kezelman
Australia’s Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse is a global first. Its private sessions and public hearings, including those into the Catholic Church’s Towards Healing Process, have given a voice to victims. The royal commission, Australia and the world are listening and bearing witness to a litany of abuses and failures within the church as well as other institutions. More is to come.
The commission is helping to bring the deep-seated, pervasive and devastating issues of child sexual abuse into the light. It is an open and transparent process to uncover the systemic failures of institutions to protect children and respond appropriately to these alleged and established crimes. It is leading the way in how these investigations should be handled. Hopefully, this will be reflected around the globe.
Another world first is the unprecedented and scathing report from the United Nations into the Vatican’s handling of child sexual abuse. The UN has deemed the Catholic Church to be in breach of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, a human rights treaty prioritising the rights of children, to which it is a signatory. This finding confirms what survivors and survivor groups have long known: tens of thousands of children have been betrayed, harmed and violated within and by the church, its clergy and workers.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.