AUSTRALIA
Riverine Herald
THE Catholic Church’s Sandhurst Diocese, which includes Echuca, Rochester and Kyabram, had one of the worst child sex offence records in Australia.
Second only to the Diocese of Sale, in Gippsland. Figures in both were more than double the national average identified by the Royal Commission.
An Echuca parish priest, appalled at the shocking new data from the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sex Abuse, is also relieved it is now all out in the open.
The Sandhurst Diocese, which includes Echuca, had the second highest rate of priests accused of child sexual abuse out of Australia’s 17 Catholic dioceses over a period of 60 years.
Figures showed almost 15 per cent of priests who ministered in our diocese between 1950 and 2010 were accused of child sexual offences.
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