AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald
Rachel Browne
10 Feb 2017
A Vatican panel is dealing with a backlog of child sex abuse claims in the Catholic church internationally, taking up to three years to hand down findings about alleged perpetrators, a royal commission has heard.
The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse was told the Vatican is under pressure from Catholics to expedite processing of claims.
Teresa Devlin, chief executive of the National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church, said the length of the process was neither fair on claimants or alleged perpetrators.
“When (a case) goes to Rome, it sits there for a very, very, very long time . . . two to three years,” she said.
“That is not justice for anybody . . . I don’t think it’s justice for the accused. It is not justice for the complainant.”
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