AUSTRALIA
Bendigo Advertiser
Emma D’Agostino
@amassedmedia
8 Feb 201
SANDHURST Bishop Leslie Tomlinson has apologised to victims and survivors of sexual abuse, following figures indicating the diocese was the second worst in Australia for rates of alleged child sexual abuse in a 60-year period.
The data released from the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse related to the period between 1950 and 2010, in which almost 15 per cent of priests who ministered in the Sandhurst Diocese were accused of child sexual offences.
“The evidence of the Royal Commission, along with all we have heard over the past four years, can only be interpreted for what it is – a massive failure on the part of the Catholic Church as an institution in Australia to protect our children from abusers and predators,” the bishop wrote in a statement.
He acknowledged that the Diocese of Sandhurst had its share of perpetrators of sexual abuse, “like every other Diocese in Australia”.
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