AUSTRALIA
The Guardian
Australian Associated Press
Monday 20 April 2015
A retired Catholic bishop who was slow to act on child sexual abuse allegations against members of his clergy says he feels shamed by what happened to victims.
Bishop Brian Heenan told a royal commission on Monday he felt a “terrible sense of shame and disgrace” over what happened to former residents of the Neerkol orphanage, near Rockhampton.
Former orphanage residents last week told the royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse of the physical, sexual and psychological abuse they suffered at the hands of nuns and priests before the orphanage closed in 1978.
Heenan was the head of the local Catholic diocese in the 1990s when abuse victims came forward. He publicly dismissed the allegations as “scurrilous” and allowed the priest at the centre of the claims to continue working in the church, including alongside children, for several years.
Heenan later formally apologised to victims. He told the commission that hearing the former residents’ stories again had reinforced to him their “dreadful” experience.
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