Church to revisit abuse compensation

AUSTRALIA
The West Australian

AMANDA BANKS, LEGAL AFFAIRS EDITOR The West Australian
May 7, 2014

A Christian Brothers’ leader has told a royal commission hearing in Perth this morning that the order will revisit any compensation payment considered to be unjust by a victim of child abuse.

Brother Julian McDonald, a deputy province leader, told the hearing that the commitment would encompass all 11 men who gave evidence to the commission last week of brutal and repeated abuse at the hands of brothers at four WA orphanages run by the order.

“I will say here and now that any settlement that is regarded by the person settled with as unjust will be revisited,” Brother McDonald told the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

Questioned by lawyer Mark Cuomo, representing one of the men who gave evidence of abuse, Brother McDonald said selling properties which were still owned by the order – and built by the unpaid child labour of former residents – and using the proceeds to compensate those left damaged by abuse was a “possibility”.

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