AUSTRALIA
The Guardian (UK)
Adam Brereton
theguardian.com, Tuesday 1 July 2014
The first year’s work of the royal commission into child abuse, compiled in their interim report released on Monday, is a grand achievement. Between the public hearings, private sessions with victims and the rigorous process of community consultation and scholarly research, the commission is already a triumph, however grim – a one-of-a-kind moment in Australian history.
The interim report is largely a plea for a time and funding extension, and apologises for not yet offering definitive profiles of either perpetrators or institutions. However the information the commission has collected to date does at least allude to conclusions to come, one of them quite unsettling: that child abuse in Australia has a distinctively Roman Catholic character.
The report records that 87% of alleged abusers were male, and 29% of those were clergy. The next largest group were teachers, at 16%, but the commission notes that “alleged perpetrators could be both members of the clergy and teachers”.
Catholic institutions were also the most commonly reported sites for abuse. Of 1,033 faith-based institutions reported to the commission, 68% were Catholic. When broadened out to include non-faith government and private sites, Catholics still comprised 41% of the total – the largest group.
In one short section on page 123, the report notes that: “The Royal Commission wants to find out why there have been a significant number of perpetrators in certain institutions.” The commission’s scholarly research projects, 21 of which were completed by June 2014, identify which certain institution that is.
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