AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald
June 16, 2018
By Chrissie Foster
This week we witnessed an historic moment. Our Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, announced he would implement 104 of the 122 recommendations from the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sex Abuse which relate to the Commonwealth.
During his announcement there was debate about the seal of confession being broken to report child sexual abuse.
The government is now considering the commission’s recommendation that it be made an offence across all states and territories to fail to report that a child is at substantial risk of sexual abuse. If, pending discussions with the states, the laws are harmonised nationally, that would remove current protections to priests in the confessional and force them to report relevant information revealed in confession.
Almost immediately the Catholic Church took to the media, again reiterating their oppositions to such actions.
Because of their opposition to the government and the royal commission recommendations on this issue, I feel I must contribute by again reiterating what must be the perfect argument for the seal of confession to be broken for children.
The McArdle case is mind numbing. In Queensland in October 2003, Catholic priest Michael McArdle pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting generations of children.
In a sworn affidavit which he made public, McArdle stated he had confessed to sexually assaulting children 1500 times to 30 different priests over a 25-year period in face-to-face confessions.
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