AUSTRALIA
The Standard
By MELISSA CUNNINGHAM
Feb. 25, 2016
A FORMER Ballarat Bishop who presided over decades of paedophile priests says he is “terribly sorry” for not taking the mounting allegations of sexual abuse of children seriously, admitting the situation was out of control and he did not know how to handle it.
“I wish I had of done things differently in that time,” he told the Royal Commission into Child Sexual Abuse on Thursday.
“I really didn’t know what to do or how to do it.”
Appearing via video link from a Nazareth House nursing home,terminally ill Bishop Mulkearns, 85, said he could not have comprehended the gravity of damage the sexual abuse of children by clergy would caused.
“In those days, it’s a long time ago but we really didn’t know how quite to deal with these things,” he said.
“Well I didn’t anyway.”
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