AUSTRALIA
Broken Rites
By a Broken Rites researcher (article updated 13 November 2013)
Australia’s first parliamentary inquiry into church child-sex abuse tabled its report on 13 November 2013. The report, commissioned by the Victorian State Parliament, criticises the Catholic Church’s culture of cover-up and it recommends changing the laws behind which the Catholic Church has been sheltering.
The report recommends:
MAKING it compulsory for church authorities to report church-related crimes to the police;
MAKING it a criminal offence if a person in authority conceals any church sex-crimes;
A CHILD endangerment offence – making it a criminal offence for people in authority to knowingly put a child at risk, or fail to remove them from risk;
EXPANDING grooming offences to create a separate offence for grooming a child regardless of whether sexual assault actually occurs;
CIVIL law reforms to make it easier for victims to sue non-government organisations, including churches.
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