AUSTRALIA
7 News
BY THOMAS ORITI – ABC
December 10, 2013
An inquiry into child sexual abuse within the Catholic Church has heard the people involved in a pastoral and redress scheme for victims received two days of training.
The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse is examining the Towards Healing process, established by the Church in 1996 to respond to complaints against its personnel.
The Church’s Director of Professional Standards in Queensland, Mary Bernadette Rogers, says she participated in a two-day course in 1997 before she started to liaise with victims.
She told the inquiry that was enough, given that staff already had experience in “dispute resolution”.
Ms Rogers was involved in the case of Joan Isaacs, who was abused by a priest when she was 14 years old.
The commissioner heard that in 1967, Father Francis Derriman told her he was going to die and said he needed to have sex with her.
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