AUSTRALIA
lewisblayse.net
You’ve got to hand it to Mr. McClellan (see previous postings) and Gail “Snow White” Furness (see previous postings) of the Australian royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse. They certainly give the Catholic Church every opportunity to “clarify” previous evidence.
Originally, they gave them an extra bite at the cherry this Wednesday, to present new arguments on the actual hearings on “Towards Healing” (the process for dealing with victim complaints), held last year. Then they gave them Thursday. Now they have given them Friday, to correct a mistake from Thursday.
Michael Salmon (see previous posting), director of the Catholic Church’s NSW/ACT Professional Standards Office, said he wanted to submit a supplementary statement “to assist the commission”, so they let him do so today.
Mr Salmon facilitated the 2010 “Towards Healing” session with DK, who was sexually molested when he was a student at the St Augustine’s Marist College at Cairns in Queensland State. Evidence from Mr Salmon, on Wednesday and Thursday, suggested that the conversation DK had with former college principal, Brother Gerald Burns and another clergy member covered what they knew of inappropriate behaviour by Ross Murrin in relation to DK and other boys.
In his evidence on Thursday, Br Burns (the former principal of St, Augustine’s college, where DK was abused by a Br. Murrin who is currently in prison) told the commission DK never asked him about offences against other boys, but only about his own situation. Br Burns also said a file note from Mr Salmon written after the mediation session, which suggested otherwise, was inaccurate.
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