BALLARAT (AUSTRALIA)
ABC Ballarat
October 21, 2018
By Charlotte King
Survivors of institutional child sexual abuse in Ballarat have dismissed the Prime Minister’s national apology in Canberra on Monday as “hollow” in the face of inconsistent reporting laws.
It took 536 pages for lawyers working for the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse to summarise the extent of child abuse committed within Catholic institutions across the Ballarat diocese.
It was the first time the inquiry had focused on an entire community, and what they found was a “catastrophic failure of leadership” that put the reputation of the church before children, and caused irreparable harm for the entire community.
“I want people to be serious,” said Paul Tatchell, a 59-year-old city councillor who was assaulted by the former Christian Brother, Edward Dowlan, as a teenager.
“I stood up, I paid a price for it, and I need someone out there to do the same.”
Mr Tatchell was one of the first child abuse victims to successfully pursue Dowlan’s criminal prosecution in the 1990s.
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