AUSTRALIA
The Newcastle Herald
March 14, 2018
By Joanne McCarthy
THE Australian Catholic Church needs to “deal with” the legacy issues of transferring child sex offenders overseas for decades, says the man who steered the church through the Australian child abuse royal commission, Francis Sullivan.
“This is certainly an issue the church leadership in Australia needs to respond to and deal with,” the outgoing chief executive of the Truth Justice and Healing Council said a week before the council is disbanded.
“The sexual abuse of any child anywhere is an abomination and when the perpetrator is a Catholic religious or priest then the Catholic Church needs to take responsibility,” Mr Sullivan said.
“Survivors of abuse in Papua New Guinea or any other overseas jurisdiction by offenders sent to those places by Australian Church authorities should be treated in the same way as survivors abused in Australia.”
His comments came as Papua New Guinea police commander Andrew Weda said on Tuesday he would meet this week with police who have completed an investigation into “touching” allegations against Australian Vincentian priest Neil Lams while chaplain to a school.
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