AUSTRALIA
The Age

December 15, 2015

Judy Courtin

The Catholic Church continues to harm sex abuse victims by its failure to acknowledge the extent to which it covered-up sex crimes against children.

For three weeks, the County Court of Victoria has been host to countless victim survivors of Catholic clergy child-sex crimes. The severe psychological and psychiatric harm caused by these crimes was evident not only with the primary victims giving evidence, but also the many family members of loved ones who had killed themselves because the pain and damage of the sex crimes were too great to bear.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse fastidiously scheduled four weeks of hearings into the Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne and the Diocese of Ballarat. These were to be concluded this week by three days of evidence and cross-examination of Cardinal George Pell. But such an apotheosis was…