AUSTRALIA
PerthNow
Megan Neil, Australian Associated Press
February 8, 2017
The child sex abuse scandal has destroyed the image of the Catholic Church in Ireland, an Australian royal commission has heard.
The former provincial of the Jesuit order in Ireland, Dr Gerry O’Hanlon, said the scandal changed the culture in Ireland so much that in the 1990s almost all priests were viewed as pedophiles.
“The image and the reality of the Catholic Church in Ireland has been severely dented and almost fatally destroyed by the abuse scandal,” Dr O’Hanlon told the child abuse royal commission on Wednesday.
The Jesuit priest and theology professor said the voice of the child would not have received a proper hearing in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s.
He said the culture had now swung in the opposite direction and there was little evidence of the presumption of innocence for a priest accused of abuse, in the small number of cases where the allegations were found to be false.
Many priests now felt they would not receive a fair hearing within or outside the church, he said.
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