AUSTRALIA
The Age
August 22, 2014
Jane Lee
Legal Affairs Reporter for The Age
The Melbourne Response attaches the “stigma” of being a paedophile to priests, brothers and nuns it determines guilty of clerical abuse, the Catholic Church’s independent investigator says.
The Royal Commission into child sexual abuse is investigating the effectiveness of the Melbourne Response, the church’s internal process for handling victims’ complaints.
Jeffrey Gleeson, QC, is one of its two Independent Commissioners who assesses victims’ complaints. He appeared before the Commission on Friday and defended the scheme, saying it helped victims feel “believed”. He also said it was his role to tell them they did not have to report to police if they did not want to.
The Commission’s chairman, Justice Peter McClellan, asked Mr Gleeson whether his approach to complaints was driven by concerns about how his decisions would impact on clerics or for victims: “Because the redress scheme in itself has no consequences for the alleged abuser.”
Mr Gleeson rejected this, saying that clerics were named when he found there had been abuse which meant “that person suffers the appropriate stigma of having been determined to be a paedophile.”
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