AUSTRALIA
The Guardian
Melissa Davey and agencies
Sunday 13 August 2017
Clergy who refuse to report child sexual abuse because the information was received during a religious confession could face charges if recommendations for new institutional criminal offences are accepted.
The child abuse royal commission wants failure to report child sex abuse in institutions to be a criminal offence, extending to information given in religious confessions.
People in institutions who know, suspect or should have suspected a child is being sexually abused and fail to act should face criminal charges, it says in its criminal justice report released on Monday.
Stephen Woods – who was abused by the notorious pedophile priest Gerald Francis Ridsdale and the convicted pedophile brother Robert Charles Best while a student at St Alipius primary school in Ballarat– praised the commission for the recommendation but said it was overdue.
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