AUSTRALIA
The Age
November 14, 2013
Jane Lee
Legal Affairs Reporter for The Age
The Catholic Church says it wants to fund an unlimited national compensation scheme for child sexual abuse victims.
The church’s Truth, Justice and Healing Council – a national mouthpiece established after the royal commission was announced – issued a statement on Thursday, saying that it would ask the attorneys-general of the federal, state and territory governments to begin working on the scheme.
The move comes a day after a state committee tabled its Betrayal of Trust report, the result of an 18-month inquiry into the handling of child abuse by religious and other organisations.
Georgie Crozier, the chairwoman of the inquiry’s committee, delivered the report to parliament with a slew of stinging rebukes of the Catholic Church’s leaders, whom she accused of trivialising the problem of child abuse as a “short-term embarrassment”.
The report recommended an independent redress scheme run by the government but paid for by non-government organisations, to replace the Catholic Church’s internal systems for dealing with victims – called Melbourne Response and its national equivalent Towards Healing – which victims criticised throughout the inquiry as lacking transparency.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.