AUSTRALIA
Bilgrimage
William D. Lindsey
The committee established by the parliament of Victoria in Australia to conduct an inquiry into the handling of child abuse by religious and other non-governmental organizations has just presented its report to parliament. The report is entitled A Betrayal of Trust, and is online at the parliamentary website (part one is here, part two here, and an executive summary here; all are pdf files). As David Marr reports for The Guardian, the report is “unsparing” in its criticism of the Catholic church.
The report notes that it focuses on the Catholic church because the submissions it received from victims of abuse in Victoria when parliament established the inquiry were preponderantly from people who had experienced abuse by Catholic religious authority figures. A major theme of abuse survivors was the betrayal of trust by religious organizations they had previously trusted–as the report notes, “particularly the Catholic Church.”
That betrayal of trust had eroded their sense of self-worth throughout their lives, survivors reported, resulting in mental health struggles, difficulty establishing healthy relationships, addiction issues, problems in education and employment, and so forth. Regarding religious groups and how their betrayal of victims’ trust affected their lives, the report’s executive summary states,
This feeling resulted from the inconsistent approaches by organisations to victims versus offenders—that is, giving inadequate support to victims, while providing pastoral, legal and financial support to offenders. They spoke of unfulfilled promises by leaders in the organisation and the trivializing of their experiences.
About the response of the Catholic church, in particular, the report states,
In regard to the Catholic Church specifically, the Committee found that rather than being instrumental in exposing the criminal abuse of children and the extent of the problem, senior leaders of the Church:
• trivialised the problem
• contributed to abuse not being disclosed or not being responded to at all prior to the 1990s
• ensured that the Victorian community remained uninformed of the abuse
• ensured that perpetrators were not held accountable, with the tragic result being that children continued to be abused by some religious personnel when it could have been avoided.
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