Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Royal Commission - Acknowledgement and justice long overdue

The announcement of a national Royal Commission into child sexual abuse has been strongly welcomed by the thousands of church and other victims and their families and supporters.

Hopes are high that it will result in justice and acknowledgement of the serious crimes committed. 

The associated cover-ups and deceit reach into the highest levels of police and church hierarchies. 

But the issues go beyond the question of justice and assisting victims and their families and protecting children into the future. 

They raise the question of state-church relations, in particular, whether church law is above and beyond state law in a modern secular society. 

 The strength of public opinion following the ABC’s Lateline TV program on November 8 forced the Prime Minister’s hand. 

Apart from the public, Prime Minister Gillard was under considerable pressure within Labor ranks, from the Greens, the Opposition and Independents. 

As recently as August she rejected calls for a Royal Commission. 

Just how much the Royal Commission will achieve depends on its terms of reference, its financing and staffing, and how it operates. 

Detective chief inspector Peter Fox, who has had 30 years in the NSW police force, 20 of them working with victims of abuse, put his life and job on the line when he blew the whistle in an interview with Tony Jones on the public broadcaster’s Lateline program. 

 For years he had been supplying detailed reports to his superiors in the police force seeking fuller investigations into sexual abuse in the Newcastle-Maitland Diocese. 

His concern and frustration at the lack of action and complicity of the church led him to blow the whistle. 

Fox had written to NSW Liberal Premier Barry O’Farrell indicating the extent of the criminal abuse of children in the hands of the Catholic Church, and calling for a state Royal Commission. 

 “I can testify from my own experience the Church covers up, silences victims, hinders police investigations, alerts offenders, destroys evidence and moves priests to protect the good name of the Church,” Fox said in his letter. 

The evidence is “irrefutable,” Fox told Tony Jones. “For people to sit back and say it’s not going on, they’ve got their head in the sand. 

The greatest frustration is that there is so much power and organisation behind the scenes that police don’t have the powers to be able to go in and seize documents and have them disclose things to us.” 

Fox said he had definite information that the covering-up goes as high as diocese bishops or even higher. 

He raised concerns about the role of police. He had been working on the case of father Denis McAlinden since 1999, and had built up considerable trust with the victims to obtain their statements. 

Out of the blue he was taken off the case and told to hand over all of his evidence, including an “explosive” statement from a church insider. It is certainly not consistent with police practice. 

As Fox said, “We’re instructed when you go to detective courses is that you don’t hand victims around like numbers.” 

There are 400 known victims in the Newcastle-Maitland diocese alone. 

It was revealed that very senior members of the church clergy are under investigation in relation to the McAlinden matter. 

They include the Archbishop of Adelaide, Philip Wilson, the general secretary of the Bishops Conference, Brian Lucas, and the former Bishop of Newcastle, Michael Malone. 

Fox also raised the difficulties police have. 

“Still today there are some antiquated rules and laws where priests, for argument’s sake, that have had allegations of abusing and molesting children, that is kept by the bishop. 

“If it’s a school teacher in the Catholic schools system, it goes to a different department. But the bishops still retain that. I don’t know why. There’s no obligation on them to pass that information on to police…There’s so much evidence on the basis that paedophile priests, once they become known by their hierarchy, the hierarchy has a systemic pattern of not forwarding that information on.” 

Following the ABC program, O’Farrell quickly moved to announce an inquiry (not a Royal Commission) with extremely narrow terms of reference relating only to Fox’s allegations of interference by his superiors in the police and the Catholic Church. 

 In Victoria, a parliamentary inquiry is under way, and the evidence from police and other organisations of church cover-ups is mind-boggling. 

Newcastle-Maitland diocese bishop Bill Wright countered Fox’s claims with a letter to be read to Catholic congregations in the Hunter, defending the present practices of the church in NSW. 

This is typical of the response of church leaders – defend the reputation of the church and claim it no longer occurs. 

Denial
In response to Fox’s claims and bad media, Cardinal George Pell said that the church’s approach to child sexual abuse had improved. 

The “Towards Healing” Protocol was adopted nationally in 1996 while the Melbourne diocese runs its own Melbourne Response. 

The stated aim of Towards Healing is to handle abuse complaints and give pastoral care to victims and provide guidelines for conduct of clergy. 

The process of handling victims’ complaints remained within the church, the police were not informed – in other words it perpetrated the cover-up and protected criminal clergy. 

The ceiling for victim’s compensation claims under the Melbourne Response is $75,000. 

The organisation 

In Good Faith & Associates, an advocacy organisation for survivors of clergy and religious abuse, told the Victorian inquiry that about 2,000 victims had been through alternative avenues and offered larger amounts. 

The Melbourne Victims’ Collective, a Catholic victims’ group, cited 99 instances at the Victorian inquiry where it said the Melbourne Response had failed them. 

 In an opinion piece in The Sydney Morning Herald (17/11/2012) Pell said: “Catholic teaching is clear: the seal of Confession is inviolable. The law of the land is also clear.” 

It protects clergy from being required to divulge details of a religious confession. The editorial in the same issue of the Sydney Morning Herald demanded the sanctity of Confession to be preserved. 

“Under canon law, a priest cannot breach the confidentiality of Confession. It is non-negotiable – no matter what state law requires.” 

 It is true that existing laws exempt priests from having to divulge admissions of paedophiles. These laws should be changed and the church forced to comply. 

In many respects, the focus on the Confessional, while being an indication of the Church’s thinking that it is a sacred institution above human made laws by elected governments, acts as a diversion from the extensive withholding of information from the police that was not obtained in the Confessional. 

The knowledge was obtained from victims and their parents, from other church members, even by open admission of the perpetrators themselves. 

Massive cover-up 

The same edition of the Sydney Morning Herald reported on the Encompass Australasia program which was funded by the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference and Australian Conference of Religious Leaders to assess and treat male clergy described as “sexual boundary violators”. 

The article by Richard Baker and Nick McKenzie states: “The Australian Catholic Church holds thousands of pages of documents containing the psycho-sexual profiles of dozens of clergy accused of sexually abusing children and vulnerable adults. It is understood that none of the clergy treated under the multi-million-dollar program run from Wesley Private Hospital in Sydney was referred to police for investigation.” 

This information did not come from the Confessional. 

The Victorian parliamentary inquiry has also heard damning evidence from police that church leaders in Melbourne had not reported any abuse cases to police. 

The cover-up is perpetrated by confidentiality clauses in negotiated settlements with victims. 

Reports from victim groups suggest that up to 70 percent of the Brothers from the St John of God order in NSW are suspected child abusers. 

The same order in Victoria paid more than $3.6 million in compensation to victims. 

Power of the church 

The separation of state and church does not give the church the right or the authority to refuse to abide by the law of the land. 

The power of the church extends its tentacles over politicians, sections of the judiciary, police and other state authorities. 

This power is derived from a number of sources, including Catholics in key positions, from the messages sent through its pulpit and its financial might. 

The church is one of the 10 largest businesses in Australia. It is tax exempt, and receives hundreds of millions of dollars from governments to subsidise its activities. 

Its Social Services arm has more than 70 agencies, it has 22 charities; four of the top five charities are Catholic. 

Catholic Health Australia represents 20 public hospitals, 36 private hospitals and 130 nursing homes and hostels. (Financial Review 17-18/11/2012) Its revenue runs into tens of billions of dollars. 

The most extreme right-wing elements of the church have a tight grip on the Labor government as well as within Liberal Party ranks. 

Tony Abbott is said to be a friend of Pell’s. 

The Prime Minister deemed it necessary to consult Cardinal Pell before announcing the Royal Commission. 

The agreement to extend the inquiry beyond the Catholic Church to other religions, groups and state institutions served to take the heat off the Catholic Church. 

O’Farrell limited his inquiry as much as possible, and avoided a Royal Commission which has powers to call in evidence that might otherwise be lawfully withheld. 

Reputation comes first 

“We are not interested in denying the extent of misdoing in the Catholic Church. We object to it being exaggerated. We object to being described as the only cab on the rank,” said Pell, attempting to defend the reputation of his church. 

Pell equated an apology from the church as justice. 

The statement from the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference also attempted to defend the reputation of the church: “It is unjust and inappropriate to suggest crimes are being – or have been – committed, without producing evidence.” 

The real injustice is the betrayal of victims, the failure of the church to hand all of its evidence over to the police and its ongoing cover-up of child rapists and other abusers – the lowest of the low when it comes to criminal activity. 

The claims are not exaggerated. 

The statistics show why the focus is rightly on the Catholic Church. Church leaders should be asking why such a large percentage of paedophiles are Catholic clergy or teachers in Catholic schools. 

Becoming a brother or priest offers great access to children in environments where they have unquestioning trust – orphanages, altar boys, school children (as chaplains or teachers), hospital chaplains and as parish priests. 

The church provides them with sanctuary. The concentration of paedophiles in the Catholic Church is not confined to Australia. 

In Ireland, it took a mass exodus of parishioners before any serious attempts were taken to address the situation. 

In the US there are similar problems. 

This is the same church that opposes the lay teaching of ethics in schools and seeks more funding for school chaplains in government schools. 

A criminal matter 

Contrary to Pell’s claims, it is not an attack on the Catholic Church. 

It is a criminal matter that has been covered up by elements within the church. 

A reading of cases on the victims’ advocacy group Broken Rites website leaves no doubt as to the extensive cover-ups that have taken place, with priests, brothers and teachers moved on as their activities become known. 

The overwhelming majority of cases relate to the Catholic Church. (brokenrites.alphalink.com.au

The traumatic experiences of victims, lives that have been destroyed, the suicides, the cover-ups by the church, the failure of police to act, are appalling. 

There are the stories of children whose parents would not believe them, the victims who waited for their parents to die before telling anyone. 

There are who knows how many thousands more destroyed lives, where victims are not able to face the trauma of reliving the pain and humiliation of clerical sexual assaults. 

Many still carry feelings of guilt, some fear the stigma attached. This is in no way to suggest that all Catholic priests and brothers are perpetrators of or have been involved in covering up the criminal acts of other clerics. 

The majority are just as appalled as their parishioners and the general public. 

The victims are looking for acknowledgement of the facts. 

They are seeking justice and want to know it cannot happen again. 

Royal Commission 

The terms of reference of the Royal Commission will be critical. Already the government, church leaders and some sections of the media have attempted to play down the Catholic Church’s part. 

It might assist to divide the work of the Commission, with one section devoted to offences related to the Catholic Church, another to state institutions, etc. 

The police must continue with prosecutions as information comes to light. 

Victims who do not want to be identified must be provided with a means of giving evidence. 

The giving of such evidence is not easy and needs to be done in a supportive atmosphere with trust. 

 The choice of Commissioners will be critical; they should be truly independent and include at least one woman. 

They must have the courage to take on the church hierarchy and demand or seize from the church what information they require. 

The Commission should be given all the staff and other resources it requires, the time its needs so that all voices can be heard. 

At the same time, it should be able to provide interim reports and recommendations for the government and other institutions to act on. 

In particular, questions of compensation of victims should not be held up.