AUSTRALIA
The Age
May 19, 2015
Konrad Marshall
Senior writer
Cold rain fell heavy and hard on the roof of the former church hall next to the Ballarat Magistrates’ Court.
These days it is a restaurant, on Tuesday it provided overflow seating for those who came to listen to day one of the Royal Commission into Institutional Child Sexual Abuse in this small regional town west of Melbourne.
It was a strange place to hear the sins of the clergy. The stained-glass window in the sanctuary had been appropriately covered.
Ostensibly this was to mitigate the glare bouncing off the screen of closed-circuit camera feed from courtroom five next door, but you had to imagine the curtain also served to mute the mockery the evidence gave to these religious surroundings..
This was the first day of up to three weeks of testimony from victims, perpetrators and experts about the scope and impact of a period of cruel and systemic abuse, subsequent neglect and shunning, resultant loss of faith and connectedness.
And so sat victims, fathers, brothers, mothers and sisters, listening to the catalogue of crimes committed, aided and abetted by other Fathers, Brothers, Mothers and Sisters, Monsignors, Bishops and Cardinals, and the concomitant substance abuse, post traumatic stress and endemic suicide that followed.
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