AUSTRALIA
Starts at 60
No doubt you’ve been following the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse over the past few months.
We’ve heard from convicted priests and some of their victims, and now the attention is turning to the heads of the Catholic church in Australia.
Today two of the church’s most senior Australian leaders fronted the commission, and one of them made an explosive claim about the church’s response to child sex abuse allegations.
According to reports by the ABC, the Archbishop of Sydney Anthony Fisher told the commission that response by catholic leaders amounted to “criminal negligence”.
“It was a kind of criminal negligence to deal with some of the problems that were staring us in the face,” he said.
“In other cases, I think there were people that were just like rabbits in the headlights, they just had no idea what to do, and their performance was appalling.”
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