AUSTRALIA
SBS
[with audio]
By SBS
The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child says tens of thousands of children worldwide had been abused systemically for years within the Catholic Church, and little has been done to redress the wrong doings.
The report accuses the Catholic Church of covering up the crimes by transferring abusers to different parishes, which it says facilitated the continuation of abuse.
It criticises the Church for dealing with accusations behind closed doors, allowing the vast majority of abusers to escape judicial proceedings.
Victims of clergy abuse advocate, Wayne Chamley of Broken Rites, says the church still doesn’t realise that the era of policing itself has finished.
“They don’t seem to realise that those days are over and what’s been going on around the world in things like the royal commision in Ireland, and the royal commission in Australia the Victorian inquiry etc, they’re being required to come to a process of scrutiny that they can’t control and they still don’t have the mindset that the days of self examination are over. It’s just not acceptable to the public and it’s not acceptable to the government.”
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