TJHC Blog

To keep you informed of meetings, activities and developments related to the Royal Commission regular updates will be posted here by the staff and members of the Truth, Justice and Healing Council 

And one last thing…
Francis Sullivan 30 April 2018

This will be my last blog as CEO of the Truth, Justice and Healing Council. The Council closes down on Monday 30 April. Our job is done.

I was honoured to be asked to do this job and privileged to have shared it with many remarkable and dedicated people. None more so than the Council’s staff. They so often went unheralded yet always were the kind and considerate engine room to survivors, concerned Catholics, the media and others. It was their expertise and enterprise that enabled our Council to co-ordinate the Church’s involvement with the Royal Commission and in turn to instigate and deliver substantial reforms in the Church. They, with their collaborators and colleagues, gave substance to rhetoric, structure to aspiration and impetus beyond inertia.

Apart from our office have been the many people who have, for much longer than me, been involved in seeking justice for the survivors of child sexual abuse within the Catholic Church and many others who have been working tirelessly for reform. Sometimes the ‘fog of war’ can cloud their efforts. But thankfully their selflessness has given a compassionate heart to what has been a devastating chapter in the history of our Church.

I have learned a great deal from speaking with survivors. Frankly, when I first started this work, I was very ignorant of their plight. The very fact that their voices were so easily drowned out by the everyday clutter of my life now speaks volumes to me of how self- satisfied, even cocooned, I was.

This scandal has been a real wake up call for me and I hope for my Church. Do we get it yet? I think the jury is still out. What will it take for survivors and their families to believe that we do ‘get it’? Some days I am at a loss to really know. What I do know at least is that actions do speak louder than words.

What is clearer to me these days is that the leadership of the Church has never been more aware of the crisis the Church faces and never more aware of what needs to be done to rebuild faith and trust that is at an all-time low. So many leaders tell me that they want to reconcile with survivors and restore their trust in the Church.

The test of that resolve will be in how the impetus of the Royal Commission brings change within our Church.

The Royal Commission gave a potent voice to survivors. In doing so it placed a mirror in front of our Church. This needs to be grasped as ‘a creative disruptor’ to renew, reinvigorate and regenerate the essence of being Church. Before all else survivors and their families need to get a better deal out of the Church. They need real recognition and decent treatment. Rather than struggling for a fair go they should feel overwhelmed by a generous and lasting response.

None of us gets things right all the time. Yet most of us can sense when sincerity and generosity of heart are at play. It is this well of human compassion that becomes the redemptive, restorative and ultimately the healing place for those who seek it.

When we look back will we see changes to governance within church structures and processes, a truly national redress scheme, markedly different approaches by Church authorities to civil litigation claims, an increased role for women and the laity more generally in the Church, the support for Catholic Professional Standards Ltd. and its public accountability of leaders, a reformed seminary system and the proper professional supervision of clergy and lay personnel?

My sense is that we will. This scandal has rocked the foundations of my Church so profoundly that the instinctive spirit to seek goodness, truth and beauty that binds us as a faith community will ultimately prevail.

On that note, so long!

Francis Sullivan
Former CEO Truth Justice and Healing Council

National redress scheme a slow train coming
Francis Sullivan 16 February 2018

The slow train that is national redress continues to chug along. Another COAG meeting and another disappointing outcome for survivors, whose hopes have been pinned on the redress scheme. Even with the Prime Minister cranking up enthusiasm and urging the states to get on board, the COAG meeting was a fizzer when it came to real commitments from our political leaders.

No wonder victims and survivors are sceptical. The Royal Commission’s recommendation for national redress has been known since September 2015. Yet it was only in the middle of 2017 that the Commonwealth rolled its sleeves up and began designing the scheme. The state governments have kept their powder dry and still do!

By July a scheme of sorts will be expected to be up and running. Whether it has a decent buy-in from the states is questionable. A lot of details about the scheme are still unknown. How it will operate in practice effectively falls within the rules of the scheme and they have not been made public. I assume that the states have various degrees of anxiety about that alone.

Then there are the big-ticket issues of insurance payments and procedural fairness obligations. Neither of these issues have been satisfactorily settled at this point. They are significant barriers for many institutions and again I presume that the states, although being self-insured, will have many concerns over the absence of procedural fairness in the current Bill.

The Senate’s Community Affairs Legislation Committee will examine the Bill and deliver its report by 13 March. We can safely assume that the Bill will be amended in response to the public feedback. To do otherwise will doom the scheme from the very beginning.

What is even more important is whether a genuinely national scheme can be realised. The Royal Commission expected a scheme that included all institutions, government and non-government alike. That was the scheme that Catholic Church leaders gave assent to in the Royal Commission hearings. Of course, it was also expected that any national scheme would facilitate insurance payments and be designed around procedural fairness principles.

Even from a practical perspective a national scheme needs to be sustainable and deliver the widest possible coverage of potential applicants. Ensuring that all institutions can participate and are able to guarantee payments seems obvious. So does the notion that participating institutions are provided with the information they need to verify allegations, isolate any alleged perpetrators and satisfy their insurers.

None of these concerns are insurmountable. Given commitment and good will all these issues can be addressed and a fair and fully assessable redress scheme could be up and running sooner rather than later.

But we must get it right.

Translating worthy concepts into operative programs through legislation is difficult. There will always be naysayers. Getting the political buy-in from every jurisdiction, states and territories, is vital.

So, let’s get this train moving!

Putting in a good word for the institution will not bolster morale nor ease the pain of humiliation
Francis Sullivan 19 December 2017

Now that we have the Royal Commission’s final report it is hard to know what to say.

It is almost as if nothing else can or needs to be said.

The Report does speak for itself.

The five-year culmination of public and private hearings, voluminous submissions and documents and countless commentaries has left a landmark testament to the history of sexual abuse of children in institutions, most markedly in my own Catholic Church.

When I began this journey I often said that the history of the sexual abuse of children within the Church was confronting and shameful. Even today that is my overwhelming reaction. So too is anger. It still confounds me that it took a public inquiry of this potency to drag my Church into the open.

When the abuse statistics of the Church were revealed by the Commission, it was the very first time that the Church had come clean with the community.

Yet the individual Church Authorities obviously knew their histories dating back to the 1950s and even before. They knew the extent of the abuse but none of them had sought to counter the defensive narrative that prevailed from Church apologists who laboured to limit the scandal in the eyes of the public and to relegate it to a thing of the past.

Moreover, what is most disturbing is the ever-ready attitude from sections of the Church to always try and ‘put a good word in’ for the institution as if that is somehow going to bolster morale and ease the pain of this humiliation.

What it says to me is that once again the image of the Church means so much more than anything else to these apologists. That barracking for the recent innovations and improvements within the Church somehow puts the revelations of the Commission into some manageable context.

Again, I can’t help but think that this speaks of an institution more obsessed with its own survival than one being humble and open.

Oddly, I have always been taught that a true faith disposition brings with it an openness to life’s lessons and a sensitivity to learn from what is hardest to hear!

That said, our Council will now go into the bunker for the summer and digest the Final Report in order to supply the Church with an initial response.

Some may well want to ‘jump us’ on this, probably to try and influence things accordingly, but our brief is to produce a report by Easter 2018.

After that you can find me in a pasture somewhere!

So, until then I hope this Christmas is a blessed time for you and yours. A time to pause, breathe and believe.

Instinct to hide is toxic for the future of our church
Francis Sullivan 12 December 2017

It’s just days before the Royal Commission delivers its final report and the sense of expectation is intense.

These past five years have been torrid.

Over 8,000 victims have told their stories. Others have silently stood in solidarity. Families and supporters of those damaged as children have been vindicated as the truth has been revealed.

Institutions, like my own, have fessed up and come clean about the decades of concealment, rationalisation and minimisation of the abuse scandal.

Whether the Commission has seen and heard enough to properly bear witness to the victimisation and sexual abuse of children in institutions will be borne out in its final report.

Regardless, institutions now have no other option than to step up and implement best practice in safeguarding and prevention of the abuse of children.

In the Catholic Church in particular, now is the time for action.

It is far too thin an argument to insist that the scandal should be relegated to the history books. It is essential that the Church leaders continue to hold themselves to the account of independent experts who advise on best practice and compliance.

It almost beggars belief that after these five years of revelations that some within the advisory ranks of the Church believe that progress can only occur with the Church withdrawing from public scrutiny. This smacks of the same self-protective culture that for so long kept hidden the extent of the abuse scandal in order to protect the image of the Church.

A retreat to that instinct is toxic for the future of our Church. I know the majority of church leaders are committed to change and I am confident they will provide the necessary leadership at this historic time for the Church. 

This week I called on the Prime Minister to instigate a COAG working party to oversee the implementation of the Commission's recommendations.

In that same vein, so too should the Church leaders announce a similar structure for the Catholic Church.

Put bluntly, this is not a time for business as usual. It is a time to get on with the business!

The future cannont be 'business as usual'
Francis Sullivan - 1 December 2017

This week I spoke at a plenary session of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference meeting in Sydney.

Little surprise that the main topic was the forthcoming release of the Royal Commission’s final report.

Rumour has it that the report will be many volumes long and some will exclusively deal with the Catholic Church. Again, no surprises there.

Our Council was charged to operate for the ‘life of the Royal Commission’. That time is rapidly running out. As part of our advisory role we will provide the church leadership with our own take on what these last five years have revealed and what the implications for the Church are contained within the Commission’s findings and recommendations.

Even before the report is released the bishops and religious leaders must commit to a future that is not characterised by a ‘business as usual’ mentality. They cannot fall prey to those reactionary interests within and without the Church who jump at any shadow and too quickly cast any public criticism of the Church as yet another shot across the bow of religious freedom.

It is all too convenient for those seeking to defend the institution to play out soundly based criticisms in political and sectarian terms. The Church leadership must be strong about this. They cannot yet again seek to bolster the image and reputation of the Church by ‘circling the wagons’ and being selective about what they will or won’t implement of the Commission’s findings.

The damaged credibility of the Church because of the abuse scandal affects all Catholics. Some have remained resolutely loyal and passionately observant. Others have wavered and wondered about what the scandal means and how the Church will ever recover. Others have drifted away, silently, with regret, even sadness. Still others live in hope that this scandal will enliven the Spirit within the Church to engender reforms and transformation akin to the times of the Second Vatican Council.

This is far from an extreme position. Put bluntly, the Church has been revealed for all its hypocrisy and self-interest. It has let not only those abused within its ranks down but it has scandalised the faithful and those who rely on it as a moral compass and prudent guide.

It has brought itself to a point where serious discernment and spiritual renewal are essential. Episcopal authority must lead this.

For those invested in the forthcoming Plenary Council and synodal processes only genuine renewal, even rebirth, can be the goal. Let’s hope that the bishops come out of their Sydney meetings setting a course that will deeply resonate with all of us who still hold out hope that being Church in this post-modern time is not only a relevant option but also enlivening one. 

Vital days for success of national redress
Francis Sullivan - 16 November 2017

In this historic week of the same sex marriage postal result we are hopefully advancing another important social commitment.

The Commonwealth, through Social Services Minister Christian Porter, convened a series of meetings to advance the national redress scheme. Government and private institutions were again in consultations around the workings of the scheme and the eligibility for victims.

These are vital days for the future success of the scheme.

For the Catholic Church, it all boils down to having constitutional access across the country to the scheme.

I have said it before that the church leaders want a national redress scheme.

They don’t want separate state-based schemes but see the value for victims in a single scheme that provides access to independent assessment and application of redress. Redress for victims should not be determined by their postcode.

Currently the aspirations of the church leadership are being hampered by the very fact that state governments need to either opt in to the scheme or at least transfer to the Commonwealth those powers that enable churches and other private institutions within their borders to opt into the scheme.

Once all states comply with either of those options then churches, like the Catholic Church that cover all geographic provinces of the country, can opt in.

Minister Porter is on the record acknowledging that there are still areas of the scheme that need to be settled, costings not the least among them.

There are the rules by which the scheme will operate that are yet to be finalised. There are logistical matters concerning the processing of claims, the verification of allegations and the entrenching of procedural fairness into the administration of the scheme that need to be assured.

So, final decisions to opt in by the states, beyond in-principle aspiration, are still some way off. As it will be for the private institutions.

However, the Royal Commission was left in no doubt that the Catholic Church leadership wanted to participate in a national redress scheme. So, once it is able to do so the rubber will have hit the road!

Redress bill makes it to parliament
Francis Sullivan2 November 2017

Well it has finally arrived! Legislation to construct a redress scheme was introduced into the Commonwealth Parliament last week. This is a vital first step on what looks to be a long, but hopefully fruitful path.

This Commonwealth scheme at present is, however, limited and unsatisfactory. Only 1,000 of the projected 6,5000 victims can have access to the scheme. Clearly that is not what the Royal Commission called for, neither is it what Church leaders and others committed to.

As we have known all along the success of this scheme lies plainly with the cooperation of the state governments. Without their buy-in national coverage will be impossible.

Churches and other private institutions need the state governments to facilitate their participation in the scheme. Where those states which have previously run limited schemes remain determined to stay out of this new proposal, they can still enable private organisations within their jurisdictions to participate.

Why they would render some victims within their state as worthy of access to the new scheme and others, namely those abused in state organisations, to be denied redress is their political call.

In any event our political leaders need to settle on a solution as to how a national redress scheme can be effected. The Royal Commission considered this so important it pre-empted its other recommendations by two years to enable governments to have the time to put in place a national redress scheme by mid-2018. Clearly now the ball is squarely in the hands of our elected leaders.

Institutional child sexual abuse is a national disgrace. The Commission hearings have made that plain for all to see. It is a social blight that must be addressed beyond rhetoric and hand ringing. The Catholic Church leadership has committed, more than once, to a national redress scheme. It will pay its way. It cannot join what is currently on offer and only others with the power to change things can make it possible for the all churches, non-government organisations, private institutions and state-run facilities to participate.

This is far easier to solve than the dual citizenship debacle. No need for High Court decisions or parliamentary audits.

Just governments cooperating in the interests of victims, even some from within their own organisations.

Where to from here?
Francis Sullivan - 19 October 2017

Over these past weeks I have been giving presentations on the work of the Council in various parish and professional settings. It is fair to say that there is intense interest in the 'where to from here' question.

The Royal Commission’s final report is much anticipated. It is due to governments on 15 December this year. We can be confident that the Commission will meet that date.

Given the magnitude of this inquiry we can assume that the report will be long and comprehensive! Unsurprisingly, a significant slab of it will be about the Catholic Church.

In its last session concerning the Catholic Church the Commission tested the senior Church leadership over its willingness to adopt and implement the report’s final recommendations. I am sure that the community will likewise be curious.

It seems to me that the Church leaders now need to make a definite commitment to implement the recommendations that fall within their power to do so.

The inquiry has laid bare the factors that led to the gross mishandling of abuse cases within the Church. It has demonstrated beyond challenge that the Church leadership did not do enough at the right time to safeguard children and prevent further abuse occurring. 

This has led to a corrosion in confidence and trust about the institution of the Church and in turn, has demoralised its followers. Now only action from the leadership can begin the process of atonement.

The Royal Commission’s final report will mark a point in time where public scrutiny will once again fall to the current Church leaders to demonstrate that the church will not resort to "business as usual" when dealing with abuse cases.

Many will know that much has already been done and more is being planned. But the wider community does not know this. And many within the Catholic community are unaware of where dioceses and religious orders have taken the processes of pastoral care of survivors.

The Church leaders will need to co-ordinate a nationally consistent implementation of the Royal Commission's findings.

They have already kick-started a new and more rigorous standards setting and monitoring agency. This is a great innovation and will place a level of transparency and scrutiny on church leaders never seen before.

To complement that accountability measure they need to organise an administrative response across the country that demonstrates real action for change and open channels for best practice in institutions for the care of children and vulnerable people.

An enthusiastic commitment from good people might be cause for optimism in the current climate, but enduring change will require solid action and amendments to legal and financial processes within the Church.

It’s a difficult task that lies ahead that can’t be left in the too hard basket.

National Redress
Francis Sullivan - 5 October 2017

As we move into October it is not long before the nation's political leaders will have to show their hand on support or otherwise for a national redress scheme.

Social Services Minister Christian Porter has stepped up. Already he has released draft legislation that can morph into a national redress scheme.

The administration of the scheme will be supplied by the Commonwealth, but the parameters under which payments are made to victims will ultimately need passage through the parliament.

In other words, what we end up with as a redress model for victims of institutional child sexual abuse will be the result of the forthcoming parliamentary debate.

We can expect intense scrutiny of the scheme by the Senate. As the states’ house, this is where each state and territory government must actively engage with the legislation so that a truly national scheme will result.

There is no point developing a half-hearted program of redress where only some victims in some states have access to the scheme.

Minister Porter has been very upfront with governments and private institutions about the scheme. The Commonwealth's limitations as well as its resolve have been clear from early on. We are now literally in a period where good will needs to prevail.

Most private institutions, including the major churches, conceptually want a national scheme. There are hesitations over some practical aspects and far more clarity is needed over how insurance coverage can effectively work to assist with reparation payments. At this stage of the drafting process that is not unusual.

However, some higher order issues need to be kept front of mind.

The Royal Commission process has unearthed a shocking level of abuse within institutions, both government and private. Moreover, it has revealed that many victims have not had access to any redress. There has been little dispute that the institutions where abuse occurred are responsible for the redress to victims. The fact that this has not occurred is the issue.

That said, some will want to leave redress to the courts. Unfortunately, civil litigation is not a reasonable, nor is it a pleasant process for victims of historical abuse. Reforms in this area are slow at best. Whereas a redress scheme based on restorative principles is far preferable for victims. And it is victims that matter most.

There is a number of scenarios that can come out of the next month’s negotiations over a redress scheme. The least desired will be a Commonwealth program where only victims from Commonwealth controlled organisations will have access to reparations. This will be the result of no state government joining the scheme or enabling private organisations within their jurisdictions to join the scheme. 

Next iteration would see some states and territories join the scheme and therefore some private organisations able to participate. Again, any lucky victims will have access just by chance. Frankly this outcome will be the result of state government treasuries thinking far too narrowly and expediently. That is where their political leaders need to demonstrate some moral fibre.

Hopefully the most desired outcome, full national coverage, will be achieved. And if it takes some pragmatic changes to the draft bill to achieve that, then let's bring them on.

Redress hurdles, international child sex abuse report
Francis Sullivan - 19 September 2017

The Australian’s John Ferguson has recently written extensively about the proposed national redress scheme for child sexual abuse survivors, its hurdles and where it is headed.

In three articles he has identified several potential issues with the proposed scheme and highlighted some of the concerns both private and public institutions claim to have.

The issues around how it will be operated, insurances, total costs, levels of proof, access and many others will all need to be sorted out as the draft bill is finalised, the  legislation is presented to the Parliament and the likely Senate review process takes place.

What is really missing at the moment, however, is a firm commitment, particularly from the state governments, that they will be part of a scheme.

For decades survivors of child sexual abuse have been calling out for a redress scheme that provides a fair and compassionate response to the abuse they have suffered.

The Royal Commission has shown us nothing if not that institutions responsible for child sexual abuse have, for the most part, failed in delivering consistent redress nation-wide for survivors.

Certainly within the Catholic Church different dioceses and orders have treated survivors differently depending on where and when they were abused.

A national redress scheme, aligned in broad terms with that proposed by the Royal Commission, would address many of the current problems and issues associated with redress for abuse survivors.

On another issue, a major research project into abuse in the Catholic Church was released last week.

It has pulled together the findings of 26 royal commissions, police investigations, judicial probes, government inquiries, church studies, and academic research from around the world since 1985.

And while it has found the worst of the sexual abuse scandal may be over in Australia, in the Catholic Church in other parts of the world, including the Church in Asia, Africa and parts of Europe, children are still potentially in danger.

The RMIT study out of Melbourne, Child Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church, examined reports from Australia, Ireland, the United States, Britain, Canada and the Netherlands and found that one in 15 priests, or about 7 per cent, allegedly abused children and teenagers between about 1950 and 2000.

This figure is consistent with the data collected by the Royal Commission and released during its final hearing into the Catholic Church in February this year.

The study's co-author, Professor Des Cahill, is reported as saying child sexual abuse has peaked and there has been a decline since the late 70s and early 80s.

Professor Cahill believes the risks to children in Australian Catholic schools is now very low, mainly because of greater vigilance by parents, teachers and school authorities.

Safe schools and the Royal Commission
Francis Sullivan - 29 August 2017

Last week I was on the Gold Coast meeting with communications staff from different Catholic education offices around the country and then the following day in Adelaide to join Catholic school principals at a South Australian staff development day.

Both groups were keen to hear what might be the likely final recommendations from the Royal Commission and what impact they might have on schools.

The Royal Commission has had 57 case studies since it commenced public hearings in September 2013. Only a hand full have not involved a school in some way or another.

In fact in October last year the Commission heard that roughly 4,000, just under a quarter, of the contacts it had received related to educational facilities.

Its pretty clear that when the Commission delivers its final report in December this year, many of its recommendations will in one way or another relate to schools.

What we typically heard, not just in case studies involving Catholic Schools, but pretty much across the board was that when someone first came forward with a complaint within a school they were not believed.

Schools realized there was a potential reputation problem looming, so the lawyer were called in.

Eventually the school offered some compensation, generally not much, with very strict and punitive ‘do not discuss or disclose’ clauses.

At all times the reputation of the school was generally but well ahead of the person claiming to have been abused.

Most of these case studies have now been finalised and the Commission has released findings.

Again, speaking generally, the Commission found failings across many different areas in the way schools approached abuse claims – from complete failure to follow their own policies and procedures to failing to report allegations to the police and much in between.

The Commission has already made some recommendations across areas that involve schools including more robust Working with Children Checks, complaint handling processes, and recordkeeping practices.

What we do know is the Commission is currently working on a volume in its final report focused specifically on schools which is bringing together the evidence gathered through private sessions and public hearings.

And while it seems, now more than ever, that schools are among the safest places for children there is no doubt that the recommendations in this volume will place even further obligations on schools to ensure children are safe.

Legislation set to be introduced to kick-start national redress
Francis Sullivan - 10 August 2017

This past week has seen news that the Commonwealth will introduce legislation in the spring session of federal parliament to effect a Commonwealth administered redress scheme for victims of sex abuse within institutions.

This is an important first step in achieving what is essential, a national redress scheme.

The Catholic Church leadership has been emphatic an independent national redress scheme is the way ahead.

The Royal Commission has been definite that only when a national redress scheme is available to all victims of historical child sexual abuse within institutions can there be any equity in regards to reparations and institutional apologies.

Obviously this means that all institutions need to participate so that victims have access to the same redress regardless of postcode or the nature of the institution where the abuse occurred.

So now is the time for governments of all persuasions to step up. It is impossible to have a national scheme without all governments participating.

It also makes it impossible for national non-government institutions to participate if some governments refuse to participate.

So let's be clear, governments need to lead and to co-operate. Anything less will be an affront to survivors.

Convicted priest child sexual abuser speaks of abuse of power
Francis Sullivan 26 July 2017

Just recently I saw an interview in the National Catholic Reporter of a convicted priest child sexual abuser, Gilbert Gustafson. He had pleaded guilty to abusing a minor in 1983 and served four and a half years in gaol. The interview outlines his personal journey, very frankly, through the seminary and early priesthood.

He makes no excuses neither does he pull any punches about himself, his obligation to take responsibility for his actions and the need for broader Church reform.

It is in this last area that I found very strong resonances with our work here at TJHC.

Near the end of his interview Gustafson was asked what he thought the Church needed to learn from the abuse scandal. It was noteworthy that he didn’t try to shift any responsibility from himself but rather saw himself as part of a broader cultural problem in the Church.

Gustafson said that the Church needed to subject itself to external accountability. In other words to shift from an attitude that the Church is somehow beyond or apart from the wider civil society and all its obligations. The Church can’t be a law unto itself. It needs to be a good and proper corporate and civil citizen.

This has been and remains the position of our Council. Where the law obliges the reporting of child sexual assault, it must be followed. And where it doesn’t our sense of moral responsibility should demand it.

Gustafson went on to say that church leaders need to fully accept the consequences of the abuse within their ranks. In other words, they need to ensure that the Church fully atones for the sins of abuse, and for the complicity of the cover ups.

And this means taking a conscious decision not to become legalistic, defensive and obstructionist in the courts. Let the truth be revealed and take action accordingly.

A third point he made was about culture. Over the years he has learnt about the adverse impact of the patriarchical models of power, clericalism, elitism and entitlement that have underpinned the system of complicity and concealment within the scandal of abuse. This is very similar to the TJHC’s final submission to the Royal Commission in Case Study 50.

All sexual abuse is an abuse of power.

Not only are victims the subject of manipulation and domination of another, they are also vulnerable to the self interest of the institution. Until our Church gets that, we can never truly rid ourselves of the underlying causes of how this scandal was handled.

If nothing else comes from the Gustafson interview than the articulation of these few lessons is of value.

Still much more to be done
Francis Sullivan 12 July 2017

As the Royal Commissioners meet behind closed doors to finalise their observations and recommendations the rest of us begin to consider the implications for our organisations and services.

Obviously what is actually recommended and in turn implemented lies in the future. But some action can happen now.

Already we have seen the establishment of Catholic Professional Standards, a company limited by guarantee with a brief to set, monitor and report on compliance to standards of safeguarding in all Church organisations, big and small.

Although there are similar organisations in Ireland, the US and Canada, CPS will actually be holding bishops and religious leaders accountable in a very public and rigorous way. It will not be a voluntary exercise, but rather an obligation on the Church leadership to act.

There are many areas where the Church needs to smarten up its standards monitoring and undoubtedly needs to demonstrate, through public reporting, that it is continually pushing for best practice and compliance.

Given the personal reputations and standing of the CPS directors I am confident that the company is in very good hands. Along with its new CEO, Sharee Limbrick, CPS will be a crucial element in the post-Royal Commission implementation agenda for the Church.

However more than CPS is required.

The Church leadership needs to put in place an oversight mechanism that will assess how the recommendations and learnings from the Royal Commission are being implemented in the Church. This Commission needs to have long reaching impact. Governments need to respond. So too does the Church.

Negotiating the process of the Royal Commission was only the first phase.

Now the time for imaginative and innovative responses has arrived. If in the time ahead there is a perception that the Church has reverted to a 'business as usual' approach, then we should be rightly condemned.

Cardinal George Pell charged
Francis Sullivan - 30 June 2017

On Thursday we learnt that the Victorian Police have laid historical child sexual abuse charges against Cardinal Pell. Speculation to this end had been mounting for some time.

Australia’s justice system is highly regarded. It is in the interests of all involved that the system is now left to run its course.

Royal Commission research looks at risk
Francis Sullivan - 20 June 2017

This week the Royal Commission released research which looks at four major risk factors for children in institutional care.

Essentially the report says where the opportunity for abuse is there, vulnerable children are particularly targeted by adults with a propensity to abuse children. And the characteristics of the institution itself play a major role.

It looks at the population of children and young people that an institution is likely to serve, the kinds of activities in which it is engaged and the institutional character of the organisation.

Residential institutions of all kinds, including juvenile detention or immigration detention centres, boarding schools, and boarding houses in day schools, long day care, some health care settings, youth camps and family day care all have an elevated risk of child sex abuse.

And while the report discusses ways to help mitigate these risks where that’s possible, it’s difficult to ignore the role of institutional culture in the sexual abuse of children as set out in the report.

Despite the history, or perhaps because of it, major Catholic institutions now have a solid reputation when it comes to approaches to child protection. Evidence from Catholic education, social services and professional standards offices in the final hearing on the Catholic Church is testament to that.

But gaps remain in some areas of church and these are slowly being addressed.

Important as they are, mea culpas and policy announcements only go so far.

The work of Catholic Professional Standards should go a long way to ensuring policies and standards are set and closely monitored.

The report outlines characteristics of organisations which respond inadequately to the protection of children in their care. These include:

• a culture of not listening to and respecting children
• close-knit and longstanding relationships between the adults, making it more difficult for leaders to believe that the abuse has occurred
• a strong ethos of group allegiance
• an aura of respectability that makes it very difficult for parents to believe disclosures
• a primary deference to the rules that govern the organisation, to the exclusion of the civil authorities
• internal disciplinary processes that are manifestly inadequate
• a culture that discourages complaints
• invisible child protection and complaints policies
• a tendency to place a greater importance on the protection of reputation than on the wellbeing and protection of children
• a culture of minimising the significance of child sexual abuse  

And thinking back to the evidence and some of the panel discussions in the final hearing, the church still has a long way to go.

Until the Catholic church acknowledges and addresses many cultural issues (which have been well documented), it cannot say it is doing everything to ensure children in its care are safe.

Edmund Rice Apology
Francis Sullivan - 8 June 2017

Last week in Canberra Edmund Rice Education Australia, which has responsibility for more than 50 Catholic schools and entities, delivered a National Apology on behalf of its schools to the survivors and victims of sexual abuse.

It was a moving event that captured the emotion and the significance of the occasion.

As most will know Edmund Rice Education Australia now has responsibility for Christian Brothers schools and other facilities around Australia and as such also has carriage, in part, for addressing what has been a sorry and shameful history of child sexual abuse within the Order.

While the Brothers continue to share the primary responsibility for addressing the past, including revisiting claims and continuing to provide pastoral and other care for abuse survivors, EREA has the responsibility for ensuring the abuse never occurs in any of its schools again.

At the ceremony last week EREA Executive Director Dr Wayne Tinsey acknowledged that the sexual abuse of young children is “part of a destructive and shameful reality in our national history and we are totally committed to ensuring it never happens again.”

He said EREA hopes the national apology will help in the healing process and be a step towards re-establishing trust.

What was reassuring about the event was that the current headmaster of St Patrick’s College in Ballarat, John Crowley, was there to speak about what has happen in his school over the past few years to rebuild trust with local survivors.

St Pat’s and other schools and parishes around Ballarat were home to some of Australia’s, and the Church’s worst pedophiles.

But despite this, the St Pat’s school community has made a concerted effort to reach out to survivors. In many different ways a level of trust has been restored such that two former St Pat’s students who had been abused attended to the Apology in Canberra.

While there is a long way to go and there may well be missteps, this demonstrates to me that things can change for the better.

When a Catholic Community reaches out with honesty, goodwill and integrity there can be optimism for reconnection and healing. But it will only happen if survivors can see that the offers and apologies are sincere and backed by action.

Vale Anthony Foster
Francis Sullivan 1 June 2017

This week we acknowledge the untimely death of Anthony Foster, a tireless campaigner for the rights of child sex abuse survivors. May he rest in peace.

Rubber starting to hit redress road
Francis Sullivan 25 May 2017

Last week in Melbourne I met with the Federal Social Services Minister Christian Porter and people from other non-government organisations to start to flesh out the process and workings of the national redress scheme for child sexual abuse survivors.

On the same day, the Minister also met with state attorneys-general to discuss the scheme as part of the seemingly uphill battle to convince all the states and territories to join in.

The rubber is now starting to hit the road on this long-awaited redress scheme. It is absolutely vital that everyone who should be at the table is there, working as hard as possible to get the scheme up and running as soon as possible.

At the meeting last Friday, the Commonwealth gave a run-down of where it is up to including the shape of the scheme and the necessity for the states in particular to be involved.

It was made very clear that unless the states cooperate, and we know that SA and WA are dragging their feet, then it will be very difficult, for a number of constitutional and legal reasons, for all institutions to also be part of the scheme.

In simple terms the Australian Constitution makes it difficult for institutions based in Western Australian, for example, to be part of the national scheme if the WA government doesn’t sign up to the scheme itself. 

So, if SA and WA continue to hold back then, in a worst case scenario, the entire process might collapse and abuse survivors, who are all getting older, will be left to fend for themselves as they have done for many decades already.

The Commission and the Catholic Church has been calling for a "nationally consistent approach" to redress for survivors for well over two years now.

In its Redress Report in 2015 the Commission estimated there are some 60,000 survivors of child sexual abuse in Australia and it has estimated the cost of compensating them at about $4 billion.

Last week’s meetings were an important step in getting everyone on the same page.

Each jurisdiction and individual institution must do the right thing and play their part in making amends and taking responsibility for the abuse of children that took place in their institutions.

In the same way that churches and NGOs must step up, so too must the governments who had oversight of the child based institutions, that they ran and were responsible for, in which children were abused. 

Reform and Renewal
Francis Sullivan 18 May 2017

This past week saw Justice McClellan deliver another public presentation outlining the work of the Royal Commission. Amongst other things he alluded to the Commission's deliberations over the cultural factors that may have contributed to the handling of sexual abuse within the churches.

This has resulted from the case studies the Commission undertook earlier this year into the organisational factors that have been identified as contributing, to some degree, to the mismanagement, concealment and complicity of Church administrations in this scandal.

It now seems obvious that the Commission will have a lot to say about organisational cultures and how they positively or not engender child safe environments.  They may also concentrate on personnel training, formation, supervision and accreditation in that context. Moreover, the Commission is very likely to suggest changes to our national criminal laws and to police reporting requirements.

But in churches like my own the conversation needs to be far deeper and more challenging. This week I have given presentations in Perth, Sydney and Galong, just outside Canberra.

With what is now a familiar scenario those in attendance were intensely interested in the workings of the Royal Commission and the ramifications for the Catholic Church. I think that intensity comes from a sincerely held desire to see the Church acting out of a place of integrity and authenticity.

People want answers but they are also seeking a direction for their church. It is simply not good enough to ‘put the past behind' and 'focus on the positive' as if that is the solution to all that has been revealed over the course of the Royal Commission.

Rather, now is the time for Church goers, their leaders and those still interested, to plan together the remedial and restorative agenda for a vibrant and gospel based church.

Now is the time for a proper sense of corporate responsibility whereby mutual participation in decision making across the church ensures that there is both intellectual and emotional buy-in by its members.

Now is the time to be imaginative and open to new possibilities and new directions.

For some this may sound romantic at best. For others, it resonates with their hearts which have for too long felt lost and confused.

For all of us I hope, it reflects a deeper desire to express our faith commitment in ways that are relevant, credible and true.

Federal budget funding for national redress
Francis Sullivan 11 May 2017

This week’s budget announcement by the Commonwealth that some $33 million has been set aside to set up a national redress scheme for survivors of sexual abuse is welcome news.

It sends a strong signal that the federal government is committed to putting in the ground work needed for such an ambitious scheme.

Ambitious, because to be successful, the scheme demands buy-in from the states and territories, as well as the many institutions responsible for the sexual abuse of children.

The Royal Commission released its final report calling for a national redress scheme in 2015 and the Catholic Church was right behind the idea. A number of the states have come on board but a few are still sitting on the fence.

The bottom line is that not one dollar of taxpayer’s money will go to paying compensation to victims who have been abused in Catholic institutions, the Catholic Church will pay its own way.

Funding for the scheme will come from the institutions where the abuse occurred. This is how the scheme operates.

And if that institution happens to be a state government, then they should, in all conscience be prepared to pay what reasonable. This might mean revisiting claims, where payments were very low as was the case in South Australia and Western Australia.

The scheme will once and for all provide fair compensation for victims, regardless of where or when they were abused. It will also provide valuable acknowledgement of the abuse and psychological support.

Under the scheme survivors will receive up to $150,000. Some argue that cap is too low, but the figure takes into account the less demanding burden of proof needed (given many perpetrators are now dead), compared to the rigorous requirements should compensation claims go to court.  

Survivors of abuse in Commonwealth institutions can apply for compensation from July 2018.

It’s been a long journey for all survivors, regardless of where they were abused. Let’s get on with it.

Trust – hard to build, easy to loose
Francis Sullivan 4 May 2017

In the words of the well-known investor Warren Buffett: ‘It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently’.

A colleague recently pointed out to me the most recent survey by the international communications and research firm, Edelman, on trust in institutions.

The 2017 Edelman TRUST BAROMETER reveals the largest-ever drop in trust across the institutions of government, business, media and NGOs.

Trust in media is at an all-time lows in 17 of the 28 countries surveyed. Trust levels in government dropped in 14 markets and is the least trusted institution in half of the countries surveyed.

And significantly for the Catholic Church trust in NGOs fell 2 percent to 53 percent across all countries while in Australia trust in NGOs fell to 52 percent down by 5 percent from last year.

While there is no indication in the available survey material what organisations actually fall into the NGO group we can only assume churches are there.

And if the results indicate an almost 10 percent fall in trust in NGOs in Australia then it’s not a big leap to assume the fall in trust of the Catholic Church in Australia, which has been through four years of forensic examination by the Royal Commission, will be much higher.

This probably comes as no surprise for anyone who has followed the Commission and its exposure of the extent of child sexual abuse in the church and its mismanagement.

What is now the issue is how this trust can be rebuilt.

There are many views on how an organisation in crisis can rebuild trust but at the core of most, if not all approaches, is honesty.

The need to recognise the problem with humility and honestly, to tell the truth and then respond appropriately is the essence of any successful rebuilding of credibility and trust.

Following this the organisation need to address specifically the needs of its many different stakeholders, work positively on the ground with local communities and communicate frequently and honestly.

The reputational damage that the church has inflicted on itself is nothing compared to the damage done to the victims of child sexual abuse. But nevertheless, the way in which the Church leaders now approach survivors will play a key part in rebuilding the Church’s reputation.

I don’t think you can point to the exact ‘five minutes’ Warren Buffet references when the reputation of the Church was ruined but if it is to be rebuilt things will need to be done differently.

Sharing information makes for safer schools homes parishes
Francis Sullivan 28 April 2017

Over the past few years one of the many concerns about protecting children in the many different institutions they attend in their early years is the lack of information sharing that takes place both within different sectors, such as education and welfare, and also between state bodies in different jurisdictions.

We have heard evidence in case studies dealing with the Catholic Church as well as in many other cases of a school or parish being aware of an offending priest, brother or teacher but this information is not being shared with others.

In these case studies this has often meant that the offender has gone on to abuse again.

And while in some cases not sharing the information was deliberate we have also seen that because of the failures in systems or complete lack of systems offenders are able to move from school to school, state to state without the next institution being able to track their history.

This has had, in many cases, dire consequences.

In the Church’s latest submission to the Royal Commission we have called for nationally consistent arrangements to be developed for information sharing across all sectors that deal with children and across all jurisdictions.

In the submission we recommend that where there is tension between this principle and statute or the common law, the safety and wellbeing of children should have priority over the protection of confidentiality, individual reputation and privacy.

That said there are currently a number of problems that will need to be dealt with including confusion about privacy requirements, and concerns about defamation.

While within the education and welfare sectors there are some established information sharing arrangements in place it is heartening to see that within the Catholic Church awareness of the importance of information sharing is growing.

Last year, the Church’s National Professional Standards Office set up the Australian Catholic Ministry Register which provides information on priests either moving to or visiting another dioceses. Previously there has been no formal arrangement to capture and share this information.

We have all become increasingly aware that sharing information is a fundamentally important activity which can have a real impact on increasing the safety of children. What’s more it is relatively easy to achieve…if there is the political will.

Easter messages and the hope of new life
Francis Sullivan 21 April 2017

Over the Easter weekend many bishops and priests reflected on the Royal Commission's work and the implications for the Catholic Church.

More importantly they acknowledged the on-going damage that has occurred to victims and those who support them.

Even the most casual observer realises that the clerical abuse scandal has torn the Catholic Church to its core. Even where abuse cases have been largely recorded in previous decades, their impacts are still very much alive in the daily toils of victims, the strain of carers and the disenchantment of Church followers.

It is a wound that needs healing. And that is easier said than done.

The Royal Commission has enabled many Church leaders to speak openly and honestly, even if at times, in laboured terms, about the failures of the Church.

They have begun a process of public atonement that still has a course to run.

The challenge for their leadership will be to continue that process and to find genuine ways to integrate the experiences of victims into the learnings and changes for the Church.

As with all processes like this there will be stumbles, even false starts along the way.

What is important is that local attempts to atone and change are seen as being sincere and purposeful.

Then in practical ways the hope of new life which was preached over Easter will show signs of growth and promise.

New Commission research paper highlights government inconsistencies
Francis Sullivan 13 April 2017

Another week and another research project released from the Royal Commission. This time, Queensland academic, Professor Ben Mathews, has produced a report for the Commission entitled, ‘Oversight and regulatory mechanisms aimed at protecting children from sexual abuse: Understanding current evidence of efficacy.’

Professor Mathews examined oversight bodies such as ombudsman’s offices, reportable conduct schemes, children’s commissions, community visitor schemes, child advocates and children’s guardians and crime and misconduct commissions.

His report also included the non-government schools, early childhood and care sectors amongst others.

Unsurprisingly the report found that oversight bodies had inconsistent scope and powers in protecting children from sexual abuse in institutions across Australia. Whether this was due to the specific state-based legislation or whether it was the result of inadequate resources, the upshot is a national landscape of less than best practice child protection.

Over the nearly five years of work in the Royal Commission, the glaring differences between state governments in how they go about protecting children have been laid bare.

For policy makers and even legislators this is not new. Commonwealth, state and territory governments have made an art form out of shifting blame and even responsibility for failures in child protection.

One day it is a lack of resources, another it is because ‘reforms are underway’! Whether any government pays heed to this latest example of inconsistency and lack of efficacy remains to be seen.

However, in the meantime, the Royal Commission needs to ascertain what can be achievable and from within what realistic timeframe. Otherwise I fear that governments will simply plead a lack of resources and the need to address their own patch rather than be subject to the needs beyond their borders.

This makes it even more crucial that the Prime Minister and other heads of government commit COAG to establishing an implementation council that will receive the recommendations from this Royal Commission and get down to the urgent task of making them happen.

Final Hearing and priests conference in Brisbane
Francis Sullivan 29 March 2017

 The Royal Commission finished what has been a grueling and major part of its work over the past four years – its schedule of some 57 public investigations of institutions in which there was significant child sexual abuse and, significantly, a failure to respond appropriately.

As Justice McClellan said in his opening remarks during the final case study the Commission could have undertaken many more case studies were it not for the constraints of time and resources.

Despite this I think it is safe to say that the Commission has gone far and beyond what most people had expected of it when it started its work in early 2013.

While the final case study took a general approach to investigating the nature, cause and impact of child sexual abuse, not focusing on any one particular institution, the previous 56 investigations have revealed what have been horrific stories and massive failures of leadership and administration across many of Australia’s biggest and most respected institutions.

When the Church was first examined in Case Study 4 in late 2013 – the first case study to look at the Catholic Church – we released what has become known as the Church’s Commitment Statement.

In it, for the first time, Church leaders from around Australia admitted that there had been crimes and cover-ups; that leaders had moved offending priests, effectively allowing them to abuse children again; failed to report abused to the police and put the reputation of the Church ahead of the protection of children.

Over the past four years all this and more has been writ large within the Commission and throughout the media.

Here at the TJHC we have also tried to present the unvarnished facts of the hearings as they were revealed. We made a decision at the start of this process that we would not try to qualify, contextualise or minimise anything that was revealed.

We owed this to the survivors, alive and dead, and we owed it to the Catholic Community who, like so many others, were unaware of the breadth and depth of the abuse over many decades in our Church.

After more than four years of public hearings, 20 involving the Catholic Church either directly or indirectly, the Commissioners will now spend the next six months or so completing their final report.

The information they have gathered through the course of the Commission has identified more than 4,000 institutions where the abuse of children is alleged to have occurred.

The final report will be comprehensive and detailed, it will provide a road map for institutions like the Catholic Church to follow to ensure all children are safe and that survivors of child sexual abuse are treated with compassion, respect and fairness.

Some people both within the Church and beyond might think that the hard part is over. That is not true.

The job of addressing the glaring problems within the Church – particularly the culture of clericalism which seems to be at the base of so much abuse – will be hard and it will need to be continuous.

And unless our Church leaders take a very active and public role in developing responses to the Commission’s report and ensuring its recommendations are put in place then Catholics will continue to abandon the church and the broader community will continue to view it with distrust and skepticism.

As the work of the TJHC continues, this week I attended the Archdiocese of Brisbane’s clergy convention.  Building on issues emerging from the Commission’s work, we talked about the importance of supervision and ongoing formation for priests, seminary training and culture, the complexities of living a celibate life, and challenges more generally for the priesthood such as professional and geographic isolation, conflicting loyalties and loss of personal status.

Issues emerging around power and authority were also discussed, including the relationship of priests and their bishop, clericalism, possible difficulties negotiating diocesan administration and risks to transparency and accountability.

There’s a need to focus on discernment and the ability to listen with a humble heart, something that is difficult when a natural reaction to the Royal Commission might be defensiveness and a tendency to protect ideology.

Priests should be encouraged to take responsibility, to pursue best practice, to engage in supervision and ongoing formation, to be accountable to standards and to be more transparent.

Priests have an important role in empowering the local community and re-engaging the faithful, many of whom have lost faith in the church.

Rome Visit and Redress
Francis Sullivan - 29 March 2017

I have just spent a week a week in Rome during which time I spoke at a child protection conference and at plenary sessions of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors.

I particularly enjoyed being there to support our very capable Australian representative on the Commission, Kath Mc Cormack, who ably organised the international seminar on child protection at the Gregorian University. It was a very significant event – not so much because of its theme – because child protection issues, along with professional standards in general, have been the focus of specific International gatherings for some years.

Rather this seminar came close on the heels of public comments about the resolve of the Vatican to rid the scourge of clerical sex abuse from the Church.

Whether the institutional inertia so characteristic of the Curial departments was slowing down the roll out of measures to bring better accountabilities to play on bishops and leaders in general is now uncertain at best.

So too is the degree to which various bishops conferences around the world are actively alive to the scope and depth of abuse within their local scenes.

Sadly, at this stage it is hard to have confidence that bishops and other leaders are universally on board with all aspects of the abuse scandal within the Church.

These days I’m still astounded by the resistance in some quarters of the Church to actually look honestly at how the culture of the Church has contributed not only to the actions of perpetrators but also to the mismanagement of the cases, the perpetrators themselves and to the pastoral care of victims.

And it is on this last issue, the proper care of victims that the church still appears to be well behind the mark.

Having said that, this is not to belittle the tremendous effort being made across dioceses and religious orders to provide material and practical support to survivors. It is more an acknowledgement that relations between victims and the Church are still strained, even distrustful in some cases. As a benchmark, achieving productive and sustainable relationships with survivors, needs to be the highest priority. 

Meanwhile, the Royal Commission is well into its 57th and final hearing, after almost four years of public hearings. There is plenty of work to do yet, but this marks the end of the public hearings. 

In his opening statement, Justice McClellan again stressed the importance of the national redress scheme which will provide fair and consistent compensation for survivors of sexual abuse in institutions regardless of where or when the abuse happened.

The burden of proof will be limited and the cap of $150,000 acknowledges this. But it means people may qualify for compensation even though the perpetrator has died, or where proof is difficult to muster.

And importantly not one cent of tax payers' money will be spent on the compensation payments. The institutions responsible for the abuse will pay.

While the states and many institutions have yet to commit, all Catholic archbishops in metropolitan archdioceses have unreservedly backed the scheme.

In an environment where justice has alluded many people, survivors deserve nothing less.

Let's start talking
Francis Sullivan 23 March 2017

Since the Royal Commission's final hearing of the Catholic Church I have been regularly asked about where to from here. At one level the answer is straight forward. We will need to wait on the findings of the Commission and then move into implementation mode. Exactly how that is undertaken will be a preoccupation of the church leadership.

At a more immediate level the revelations and ramifications of the Commission's case studies need to be processed by the Catholic community. There is considerable widespread disenchantment and deep sadness within the faithful. The extent of the abuse scandal has rocked the confidence and trust of ordinary Catholics. A concerted process of dialogue and discernment is required to begin now, not later.

So much has been said and so many opinions have been expressed that exactions range from anger to confusion. Church leaders have been exposed to public scrutiny at unprecedented levels. Their performances have varied. But now they need to help lead the Catholic community to come to terms with the scandal.

In the first instance this means providing opportunities for local diocesan gatherings where people can express their reactions and know that they are being heard and understood. It means providing liturgical expressions of lament and healing for survivors and their families. It means pastoral planning where a needs based model of inquiry motivates and shapes the resourcing of diocesan and parish life.

This is not to say that activities such as these have not be held before. But it is safe to assume that they have not been held across the Church in a concerted way in the wake of the abuse scandal. Many parishioners express frustration that clerical sexual abuse is not spoken about in their parishes nor is it addressed more broadly in diocesan sponsored events. The time for open discussion and honest, mutual decision making has well and truly arrived.

This week on the ABC's new radio program, God Forbid, Kristina Keneally and Monica Doumit shared an hour long discussion on contemporary Catholic issues, one of which was the child abuse scandal.

Their conversation was not only stimulating, but hopeful. I thought it demonstrated what could happen at local Church levels when dialogue is well facilitated and where people are prepared to discuss issues in a respectful and considered fashion.

One of the glaring revelations in almost all the case studies involving the Church was that the decisions and considerations on how to deal with child abuse cases were kept to a limited few insiders, most often clerics only.

If nothing else we need to involve the collected wisdom of the Catholic community now in beginning to shape the type of Church experience we all want coming out of this Royal Commission and the lessons it has for us.

Where the real change is needed, the institutional culture
Francis Sullivan 16 March 2017

This week I was asked in a TV interview how is it that I can speak out in the media about the problems and changes that need to be made in the Catholic church to address so many of the issues around the child sexual abuse scandal yet don’t seem to be saying the same things to the Church leadership.

Virginia Trioli asked me on Monday why is it that I go on her program and talk about the ‘great problems of the Catholic Church. ‘Can’t you tell the Catholic Church directly yourself, they are your employer?’ she asked.

There are two things here.

Firstly everything I say in public is also said directly to the Church leaders, they are very clear on the various positions the Council has taken on the many issue the Commission has examined and, to a person, they have been supportive of all the recommendations we have made.

There seems to be a general feeling in much of the commentary around the church and child safety that not much has changed. This is far from the truth.

Over the past two decades and certainly over the past four years the way the Church engages with children, is unrecognisable from the 1950s, 60s and 70s.

Dioceses and congregations across the country have put in place swaths of child protection policies which are, for the most part, drilled into employees and religious alike. This is not unique to the Church, many of the changes are now in fact statutory requirements.

Again, dioceses and congregations have, in many cases, rebuilt from the ground up, their professional standards offices – the coal face where survivors and complaints very often have first contact with the Church.

What is the challenge and what is so hard to move is the culture.

This is the second and very important point.

As one of the witnesses in last month’s wrap up hearing said ‘culture eats for breakfast’.

And to this very point one of the people at the Catalyst for Renewal event I spoke at last Friday made this observation about institutions with strong dominating cultures, he said: ‘when they want you to do the right thing they call on your integrity, when they want you to do the wrong thing, they call on your loyalty.’

This is the Catholic Church culture, and particularly its culture of clericalism.

I could go on programs like ABC News Breakfast and rattle off a long list of changes that have been made in the Church over the past years but that would ultimately serve no purpose.

While the changes to protocols and policies are vital these are the things that are base-line in all organisations that deal with children, not just the Church.

Where the rubber really hits the road, and this is a position shared by many Church leaders as well, is trying to change the attitudes and cultures within the Church, trying to push bureaucracies in Rome and administrators here to accept that the Church ‘is not a law unto itself’.

The frustration I hear in the voices of reporters like Virginia Trioli mirrors the frustration I hear in the voice of many people in the Church, further abroad and which I share – it is the struggle to see concerted, consistent real change in the heart of the church, from Rome to parishes in the most remote parts of the world.

It is the Catholic community calling for a church that resembles what the Pope has called for, a:

Church which is bruised, hurting and dirty because it has been out on the streets, rather than a Church which is unhealthy from being confined and from clinging to its own security.

The Heart of the Church
Francis Sullivan - 10 March 2017

This week I spoke at a forum organised by the National Committee for Professional Standards at which the recently passed Royal Commission was amongst the issues discussed.

Around 150 people were there, including directors of the state and diocesan offices, representatives from religious orders and PJPs, a number of bishops, and many, many people who work at the coalface in our safeguarding offices and elsewhere. 

As we all look to the future, delegates were keen to hear about the new Catholic Professional Standards Ltd, legislative changes, the future of Towards Healing and the Melbourne Response, and other matters.

But as the dust settles following the Royal Commission’s final hearing into the Catholic Church, it’s time to pause and reflect on some of the deeper issues emerging.

There was so much said at so many levels at the Royal Commission’s final hearing that will impact on us as Church - the insidiousness of clericalism, the influence of the Vatican, the exclusive structure of the church and much more.

Discernment is the key now. We need to think about – and frankly we need to pray about – what we have heard and where to from now.

After almost four years of intense scrutiny of dioceses and religious orders many people are left bruised and confused at many different levels. There’s a feeling that our church is up for grabs.

The past four years have laid down a real challenge to the heart of the church not least to the way in which institutional and pastoral approaches to the survivors of child sexual abuse are responded to. The different ways we respond to survivors have been examined, and rightly at many levels, hung out to dry.

But the people are the church and we have to reclaim the heart of the church.

The statistics about allegations of abuse in dioceses and religious orders, released during the hearing, were so profoundly shocking. They reflected not just the horror of decades of unbridled abuse but also to some extent the behaviour of the Church and what at the time was most important to its leaders and administrators.

The broad sweeping behaviour of a church should reflect its heart not its shell.  So how are we going to manifest, to reassert, the heart of the church in a credible, authentic and practical way.

There’s something about being Catholic that we need to reclaim. And we all face the challenge of remaining catholic in light of the revelations of the Royal Commission. We have to look at how a modern Australian church will govern itself.

In the lead up to the 2020 Plenary, we must not lose momentum. We have to engage beyond our comfort zone and tap into more than what has come out of the Royal Commission. We need to reach out to the 90 per cent of Catholics who don’t turn up. In a creative spirit we must seek a new heart, a new way of being church.

We need to go to our own spiritual well and to quietly consider. Let’s re engage together.

Final hearing concludes
Francis Sullivan - 28 February 2017

The Catholic Church’s final public hearing is over. After three intense weeks of scrutiny what are we left with?

Whether it was an Archbishop, religious leader or recognised expert, witnesses spoke of a Church that had drastically lost its way.

There was no attempt to justify or excuse. Neither was there any sense that the past could be explained away as a time long gone without lessons for today.

I for one was pleased to see the openness of Church witnesses.

From the outset our Council has said that this Royal Commission was a time for victims to tell their stories. It was not a time for the Church to drown out those voices.

Rather the Church needed to come forward and explain itself. That meant facing the truth head on and not avoiding its consequences. No doubt this would be difficult and shameful as church leaders acknowledged the truth.

No one watching the Commission could have seen it otherwise. There was nowhere to hide.

The extent of abuse revealed in the data survey conducted by the Commission on allegations within the Church dating back to 1950 makes the case as plain as day.

Children were prey to clerics and religious brothers in increasing numbers up to the middle 1960s and beyond. Whether in schools, orphanages or parish settings, young, defenseless children were the target of sexual predators in what should have been secure and trusting environments.

The fact that dioceses, religious institutes and Catholic organisations were not vigilant nor rigorous enough to prevent these crimes is an indictment on the very nature and culture of these church institutions.

This was negligence on a scale that leaves any decent minded person aghast.

The Commission will soon recess to write its final recommendations. Church leaders have said that they will take all those recommendations very seriously.

Given the history of how this scandal has been handled, the Church’s response to the Commission’s findings will speak volumes.

‘Watch this space’ reform in the Church must continue
Francis Sullivan - 22 February 2017

Week three of the final Catholic Church hearing at the Royal Commission is not all bad news. This is the week that Church leaders are appearing to explain why the scandal has occurred and what can be done to make the Church safer for children and people generally.

One after another the leaders are outlining the changes to structures and process they have put in place to better meet protection and prevention standards. But they are also emphasising the need for a cultural shift in the Church.

A shift towards more mutual participation of the laity in governance and management of the Church including the participation of women.

Of course we have heard this all before but at least now these sentiments, hopefully even more than that, are expressed within the recognition that the Church of today needs to address the diversity of the society in which it works.

This does not just mean ethnic diversity, but the glaring gender imbalance within the Church when it comes to those who can participate in serious decision making and influence on the daily workings of the Church.

No longer is this a radical siren call but hopefully now it can be rightfully seen for what it is. An acknowledgement of entitlement.

Parramatta Bishop, Vincent Long Van Ngyuen, told the Commission he believes the marginalisation of women and the laity is part of the culture of clericalism that has contributed to the sexual abuse crisis.

“I think if we are serious about reform, this is one of the areas that we need to look at,” he said. “The laity have no meaningful or direct participation in the appointment, supervision and even removal of the parish priest. I think that needs to change.”

Bishop Long described the current structure of the Church as “a neat, almost divinely inspired, pecking order…heavily tilted towards the ordained.”

“So you have the pope, the cardinals, the bishops, religious, consecrated men and women, and the laity right at the bottom of the pyramid. I think we need to dismantle that model of Church,” he said.

The other stark issue that keeps confronting all leaders is the less than satisfactory way in which the Church is dealing with victims. It is still too rigid, cautious, even frightened about how to respond to victims.

Of course some survivors have had good experiences with the Church but far too many have not.

Leaders warmly speak of their concern, even heart break for victims, but there is still a gap between that emotional reaction and the practical response to those damaged by the Church.

In many ways this is a 'watch this space' time for the Church. Then again that only works for those with the time to wait!

Week two of Catholic wrap up, more being revealed and more being explained
Francis Sullivan 17 February 2017

We are now in the second week of the three that will make up the final hearing of the Catholic Church in this Royal Commission. Unlike all the other case studies the Church has been involved with, this hearing is delving into the way the Church, as a whole, dealt with the abuse scandal.

As each topic is explored, be it clericalism, celibacy, the seal of confession or screening and supervision of seminarians, a range of views and positions are on display. There is no doubt that the Catholic Church is a complex and multifaceted organisation.

I suppose this hearing can be best understood as a time for the Church, not just the Commission, to look with new eyes at itself.

As I have said before, for far too long the Church refused to fully and frankly look at itself and admit to its self-protective ways. For too long it gave in to the knee jerk defensiveness that relegated victims to second place and dismissed critics as being ideological enemies.

But now that defensiveness needs to be seen for what it was. A resistance to the truth. A rear-guard attempt to keep at bay the momentum that has finally revealed the depth and extent to which the Church tried to hide, minimalise and even rationalise away this scandal.

Fortunately for all of us, this is breaking down.

Even as recently as the beginning of this week we see once again Pope Francis apologising to victims of abuse and lamenting the suicides that have occurred because of that abuse.

For many these apologies have come far too late.

They can seem hollow because they are not backed up with concerted action. The inertia of the Catholic Church has a way of frustrating and leaving people in despair. At times I wonder if the Holy Father doesn't feel just that when he speaks from his heart, but the heart of the organisation can so often seem hard, business-like and resistant.

Last week's release by the Royal Commission of the abuse statistics held by the Catholic Church gave some historical perspective to what the Church must answer. I am not sure even if we will get all those answers over this three-week hearing.

In many ways the answers only ever come when organisations, like people, can honestly look at themselves, without blinkers and blind spots.

Jesus healing blind men, can we hope that another miracle will unfold!

The horror of the past
Francis Sullivan 10 February 2017

The release of the data this week into the extent of clerical child sexual abuse in the Australian Catholic Church has been both a statistical and spiritual ground zero for millions of people around Australia and around the world.

It has had a devastating impact on the survivors of abuse, on ordinary Catholics and on the broader community.

As I said in my statement to the Commission on Monday the numbers are shocking, tragic, indefensible and an indictment on both the men who perpetrated the abuse and the leaders at the time who covered up these crimes and turned their heads.

Much has been said and written about the data since Monday so there is little I can add, but to reiterate the clear message that while words are important the commitment of the Catholic Church in Australia to correcting the appalling failures of the past can only be measured through actions and continued vigilance.

We must continue to acknowledge the past, to accept responsibility, to understand the damage that has been done to survivors, to make the changes and to work tirelessly to ensure the abuse never happens again.

Catholic Church final hearing starts next week
2 February 2017

We are now less than a week away from the final hearing for the Catholic Church in this Royal Commission.  In many ways it is the culmination of the investigation into how the Church handled cases of the sexual abuse of children. 

The previous 19 case studies in which the Church was either the sole focus of attention or one amongst others, laid out examples of the institutional response of particular dioceses and religious orders.

Not all dioceses or religious orders have come before the Commission. Some are currently involved in legal matters that discounted the Commission from calling them. I assume that others did not fall within the interest of the Commission given its time constraints. Regardless, the Commission’s recommendations will apply to all Church organisations.

But before we get to that point the Commission is seeking to identify why the abuse happened within the Church and why it was handled the way that it was.

Our Council has made a submission for this final hearing and it should be made public once the hearing commences. Others have also made submissions after a call by the Commission to respond to Issues Paper 11. So there will be much to discuss both in the hearing and beyond.

At a time like this it can be too easy to forget the journey that has brought us to this point. Many courageous survivors have come forward to retell their stories or to reveal their ordeal for the first time. No doubt this was traumatizing and may have possibly plunged them into places of hurt and despondency. This has been a big price to pay in the interests of public knowledge and better child protection. We need to acknowledge this when the history of this Commission is told.

Some say that the community has ‘turned off’ its attention to the work of the Commission. Whether or not there is a fatigue factor, the substance of this inquiry deserves profound attention when the Commission’s recommendations are published. There has been too much damage and social corrosion to relegate this work to another bureaucratic shelf.

Church leadership puts in place lay experts
Francis Sullivan 25 Janauary 2017

It is always encouraging to see a diocese or congregation taking new approaches to the protection of children and vulnerable adults.

The latest is the Diocese of Maitland-Newcastle which this week officially announced a new independent child protection council.

The Council will provide local Bishop, Bill Wright, with advice on protecting children and vulnerable adults and on how to ensure the Diocese continues to develop its policies and practices in the field of professional standards.

Amongst other things, it is hoped the nine-member council will also help rebuild a sense of trust within the community following the harrowing Royal Commission case study towards the end of last year and the long history of child sexual abuse in the region.

Bishop Wright says the Diocese has a sad history of abuse.

"The Diocese has a particularly troubled history of failing to protect children from sexual abuse and through these failures, allowed predatory individuals to continue to abuse.

“It is this sad history which sees us now at the forefront of safety and protection as we aim to continually push forward with any activities which minimise the risk for people suffering in the future," he said in a recent statement.

 Putting in place this Council is yet another indication of the willingness, across much of the Church leadership in Australia, to look to lay experts to help address the many issues around the abuse of children and others.

The official launch of the Council comes just months after the Church announced the establishment of a new independent agency which will set, audit and report the compliance of diocese and religious orders with child safe and vulnerable adult protection standards.

Both initiatives are recent examples of the mind shift in the Church’s approach.

It was also encouraging to see that this week one of Australia’s oldest boarding schools, St Stanislaus’ in Bathurst, will make an official apology to survivors of abuse at the school.

This is the latest of a string of apologies – Marists Brothers in Canberra, St Pats in Ballarat and others – from schools which have recognised the importance of publically acknowledging the abuse and inviting survivors to be part of a recognition and healing ceremony.

It is also very encouraging to see that the head of the College, Anne Wenham, plans to publically invite survivors to get involved in the planning of the event which is likely to be held mid-year.

When symbolic events like this, built on strong decisive action, take place then there is a possibility that survivors might see the Church is willing to engage with them in different ways as it tries to acknowledge the reality of the abuse and build connections and good will.

Catholic Church Final Hearing
Francis Sullivan 18 January 2017

People on the east of the country have been sweltering under intense heat. Test match victories and early hopeful signs at the tennis have helped ease the discomfort!

Despite it being said that wise men come from the East. The wisest headed west for the holidays!

Now that I am back at my desk the heat turns to preparations for the upcoming final hearing of the Catholic Church at the Royal Commission.

It begins on 6 February and is expected to run for three weeks. Unlike the case studies this hearing will be less forensic in nature and more of an exploration of the causes and contributing factors for the institutional responses from Church Authorities to child sex abuse cases. 

As I have previously mentioned this is an important hearing and is vital to the overall assessment the Commission will make of the Church’s response to this scandal.

Last year I mentioned that we all need to be mindful of the ‘time warp’ that can trap our thinking about the incidence of and response to child abuse. The history of abuse in the Catholic Church has been confronting and shameful. There is no excuse for it.

There may well be reasons why it occurred but the fact that it did cannot be merely contextualised away.

In its private sessions and through its data collection the Royal Commission has an estimate of the extent of the sexual abuse of children within the Church. I am sure this will be made public in the hearing and I for one am bracing myself for this revelation.

This will be the first time anywhere in the world that the data of the Catholic Church on child sexual abuse has been compiled and analysed for public consideration.

The data and the evidence from expert witnesses will make for an intense examination of the abuse scandal.

It will point to cultural and sociological issues in the Catholic Church in Australia – how decision making occurred, who was involved and why. It will look at where responsibility fell and to what degree accountability and compliance processes were effectively deployed.

The hearing will seek to provide an understanding of how priests and religious were selected and trained in decades past as well as in current times 

All this within the general understanding that sexual abuse of children has occurred across institutions, and almost universally those institutions had cultures of cover up and obfuscation.

We have engaged in this Commission process openly and in a spirit of co-operation.

This will be the 20^th public hearing involving the Catholic Church and the 15^th directly focused on the Catholic Church.

It will be an important exploration of a devastating chapter in the history of the Catholic Church in Australia.  And it will be difficult for the Catholic community. But the revelations will provide a litmus for how we as Church recover and move on from this low point.

 And so this is Christmas
Francis Sullivan 22 December 2016

The past 12 months have been a big year for the Church as we continue to engage with the Royal Commission and develop new policies and approaches to the protection of children and vulnerable adults in our parishes, schools, hospitals and welfare agencies.

When the Commission was announced in 2012 by then Prime Minister Gillard no one thought it would be still running at the end of 2016, let alone with another year still to go.

It has been a long difficult process for everyone involved, most of all the survivors of institutional abuse who have been fighting a long and hard battle for justice and compassion for many decades.

This year the Catholic Church has been the primary focus of three Royal Commission case studies and has been involved in another three case studies to a lesser level.

As you all know being the focus of a case study is a daunting and scarifying exercise. It involves confronting the shocking and disturbing stories of abuse survivors as they reveal, often for the first time the horrors of the abuse they suffered as children and its devastating legacy.

It also involves church leaders and others giving evidence before the Commission about how they have dealt with allegations and crimes of child sexual abuse in their dioceses or congregations.

Some Church witnesses have come away from these hearings clearly moved by the process and having, as they say, left nothing on the field. Others, either by design or through an inability to grasp the full consequences of where they are and what they are doing, have not been as forthright.

But in all the Catholic case studies the Council has worked hard to make sure that the Commission has received every document it has requested, has heard from every witness it wanted and has received the full cooperation of the Church.

Throughout the year we have also invested a lot of time and energy developing the Church’s reform agenda.

Significant among this work has been the development of the Church’s new standards company, Catholic Professional Standards, which has been set up to independently oversee the safety of children and vulnerable adults through developing, auditing and publicly reporting on church and other standards across Australia.

CPS is a completely new way of dealing with professional standards across the Catholic Church in Australia. It is ground breaking work that many people across the Church have made a major commitment to and have shown guts and determination to see it come to life. They all deserve our thanks and congratulations.

We also played a very significant part in pushing for the Commission’s redress proposal and the Government’s ultimate endorsement of the scheme. I think it’s fair to say that outside of survivors and their advocacy groups, the Catholic Church, through the Council, has worked harder than anyone else for the scheme. This has been met with support from many and claims of self-serving from some.

Regardless of how some might view our motives, the facts are that history will view the establishment of an independent redress scheme that delivers fair consistent and just redress for survivors regardless of where or when they were abused will be towards the very top of the this Commission’s achievements.

We have also continued our commitment to meet with and listen to as many individuals and groups who are interested in the work of the Commission and the Council as we possibly can. I would say we’ve had at least one of these meetings a week over the past year.

Every time I speak with parish groups, survivors, clergy, schools or welfare groups I come away convinced of two things.

First, that that both the Catholic and broader community are dumbstruck at the extent of the abuse in the Church and the lengths to which past leaders went to cover it up and, second, that everyone wants to see change, wants to see survivors treated properly and wants guarantees that it can never happen again.

As we head into the final year of the Commission there is still a pressing urgency for more to change.

There is still as great a need as ever for all of us to be acutely aware of the immense damage that child sexual abuse inflicts, for the need to offer a helping hand and to allow survivors to reconnect not just with the Church, if that’s what they want, but with their communities and their families.

Christmas isn’t always an easy time. There can be loneliness and tension, unresolved memory and even long-held grudges.

It can also be a time of healing and forgiveness. Let’s hope that it is a time where we can be better connected and more hopeful together.

To you and yours, a happy Christmas and a just as happy New Year.

New Vatican child sex abuse website welcome development
Francis Sullivan - 15 December 2016

Last week the Vatican launched a new website detailing its efforts to protect children from sexual abuse by clergy.

This new site is yet another signal from Rome that it is slowly coming to terms with the demands of both the Catholic and broader community for far greater transparency and action around the clerical child sex abuse scandal.

The site, for the first time, brings together all the Vatican’s published documents and resources in one place, including an email and phone number to contact its Commission for the Protection of Minors.

The project coordinator, Emer McCarthy, says that transparency is very important to the Commission.

"Our members want people to know that they are doing their level best to carry out the commission of the Holy Father,” she said.

Significantly the website includes a template for local churches around the world to use in establishing their own processes for protecting minors from clerical sex abuse.

The guidelines include verifying people's identities when recruiting clergy, employees and volunteers for Catholic Church activities, and vetting them for criminal records.

The website also recommends "full information sharing" when priests are seeking to transfer from one diocese to another.

In addition it reinforces the official Vatican position that local Churches must comply with the relevant authority including civil requirements on mandatory reporting and the referral of criminal behavior to the police or relevant authority.

As I have said this website has all the hallmarks of being a great resource for Catholic leaders and communities around the world.

But as I have often said it will only ever be action that will have any impact on our credibility. No amount of spin or hollow rhetoric will achieve any change, in fact it will only make things worse.

As we have leant here over the past four years unless there is full transparency around what the church is doing about child sex abuse and how it is going about it then trying to convince survivors and the community that things are different is very difficult.

Here in Australia, despite years of bringing to this crisis best practice child protection policies and procedures, there are still many in the community who are concerned that the Church has not done all it can.

And, in some places, this may well be right but without doubt there has been a seismic shift in both the pastoral approaches the church offers to survivors and also the way in which it negotiates compensation and redress claims across the vast bulk of the Catholic Church in Australia.

If Rome is going to be able to convince the world that it is taking a new tack then it will need to be built on sustained meaningful actions. 

The Royal Commission, the Seal of Confession and what comes next
Francis Sullivan - 8 December 2016

Over the past week there has been much discussion about the Sacrament of Confession, particularly when it comes into contact with the civil law.

The key issue is: should a priest who is told by a penitent that they have committed a child sex abuse crime reveal it to the police?

At the moment there appears to be a very clear divide between the Church leaders in Australia and many parts of the broader community.

Senior Church leaders have regularly said the Seal of Confession is not negotiable. Just last week Fr Frank Brennan, in an opinion piece in The Australian, said he would disobey any law that required he reveal information he learnt during confession.

At the same time there are many child abuse advocates, lawyers and others saying that protecting children from a potentially active abuser should come before all other considerations.

I think it is important to understand where the Truth Justice and Healing Council is on this issue and why we have supported a legal approach which effectively allows what is heard in the confessional to stay in the confessional.

In 2014 the Victorian Government changed its Crimes Act to make it an offence for an adult to fail to disclose to the Victorian Police information about a potential child sex offender or abuse.

When this change was made the new law included an exemption for information that is communicated on an occasion of ‘privilege’.

Privilege is a rule of law protecting what is communicated between certain groups of people from being disclosed under compulsion of a court or a law – it applies in the case of communications between a lawyer and client, for example.

As the law stands in Victoria, this same privilege also applies to information revealed during confession.

The facts are that it has been the Victorian Government which most recently considered the legal status of privileged information, particularly in regard to child sex offences, and it came down on the side of maintaining the current position.

That is our starting point.

We have then added to this the fact that over the four-year course of the Commission’s public hearings involving the Catholic Church there has been no public evidence of someone actually confessing a crime of child sexual abuse under the Seal of Confession.

Also, significantly, in the four years in which I have met with and spoken to groups of priests only once has a priest told me that they had heard the confession of a child abuser, and that person was in goal after having been convicted of a sex abuse crime.

The whole concept of confession in the Catholic Church is built on repentance, forgiveness and penance. 

If a child sex abuser is genuinely seeking forgiveness through the Sacrament of Confession they will need to be prepared to do what it takes to demonstrate their repentance.

Part of this forgiveness process, certainly in the case of a child sex abuser, would normally require they turn themselves into the police. In fact the priest can insist that this is done before dispensing absolution.

I know some people will say "What if they don't?"  And that's where I think this question moves into areas of public consideration and what needs to happen next. 

At the moment I am unaware that it can be demonstrated this is in fact a serious public issue where children are at risk.

If this changes and evidence does emerge then the Royal Commission will clearly need to act. It will make up its own mind on what changes to the law should be made and make those recommendations to government.

If the Royal Commission recommends change to privileged communications, parliaments will then need to make their decision, and then if ultimately there are new laws that oblige the disclosure of that information, priests, like everybody else, will be expected to obey the law or suffer the consequences.

This will be a personal, conscience decision on the part of the priest that will have to be dealt with by the authorities in accordance with the new law and as best they can.

But until there's evidence of a real problem and a real danger to children the benefits of breaking the Seal of Confession to address a perceived problem does not outweigh what many within the Catholic Church see as the very real value of a private and confidential conversation directly with God.

New Victorian duty of care laws and Salesian College Day of Lament
Francis Sullivan  - 30 November 2016

Late last week the Andrews Government in Victoria introduced a Bill into the Parliament that will create a new duty of care allowing an organisation to be held liable for child abuse committed by someone associated with the organisation.

This is a significant and welcome change to the law which, in effect means that it will be up to the institution to prove it took reasonable precautions to prevent the abuse from happening rather than the victim having to prove that it didn’t.

The new law is an important step forward in making it easier for survivors of child sexual abuse to sue institutions for damages.

Significantly it is also about providing greater access for survivors to justice and ensuring institutions can be held to account for their failures in the future.

This change will have the benefit of compelling organisations to make sure they have in place the best possible procedures for safeguarding children.

It sends a very clear message that the buck will now stop with the institution in child abuse civil claims.

So unless a school, parish, community organisation, childcare or government body which cares for or supervises children puts in place all appropriate child protection measures, then it could be sued if someone in that organisation does the wrong thing while at work.

The proposed law, which is expected to come into force after July 2017, has received widespread support including from the Catholic Church.

On another issue I see the Australia-Pacific Province of the Salesians of Don Bosco will be making a public apology and unveiling a ‘sorry stone’ plaque at the order’s Salesian College in Sunbury on December 8.

This event follows the ‘Liturgy of Lament’ at Marist College Canberra earlier this month which involved a healing ceremony and installation of a permanent plaque to recognise the past sexual abuse of children at the College.

Salesian College principal, Mark Brockhus, said the apology and monument was a starting point in confronting the College’s past which has impacted on dozens of victims.

“The apology is about making a sincere statement in a public setting which deals with the trust that was abused and broken in the past,” he is reported as saying.

It is a very welcome development to see schools, orders and other organisations within the Catholic Church stepping up and making these statements of lament and apology.

And it is also just as important to see that they are building permanent reminders in their grounds of the abuse of the past and the drive to do better.

While the current principals and leaders were not involved in the abuse and its cover-up we all need to take responsibility for past crimes.

We all need to do whatever we can and whatever is necessary to ensure the abuse never happens again and that survivors are treated with respect, compassion and justice.

Catholic Professional Standards launched, Melbourne Response revised
Francis Sullivan 24 November 2016

It has been a big week for the Catholic Church in Australia with two significant announcements – the launch of Catholic Professional Standards and the release of details around significant changes to the Melbourne Response. 

First, the launch of Catholic Professional Standards which is a major shift in the way the Church leadership has agreed to approach the protection of children and vulnerable people in our schools, hospitals, welfare agencies, parishes and other Church communities and ministries.

CPS has three major roles.

Firstly it will set consistent, clear, comprehensive standards across the Church particularly where there are none or insufficient at the moment such as in parishes and seminaries.

Secondly its will audit compliance with those standards and then publish the results demonstrating one way or the other if the bishop or religious leader is running their patch consistently and in line with the standards.

And, finally, it will play an important part in ensuring everyone involved in this process is trained and educated in what the standards mean, why they are required and how to go about meeting them.

Some people in the Catholic Community might view this as another burden being placed on already over-stretched resources. It would be a real shame if that view sticks.

CPS is, and should be seen as, the best possible way for religious leaders to demonstrate to the community that they have in place best practise standards for the protection of children and vulnerable adults.

Talking on ABC radio this week Brisbane Archbishop Mark Coleridge, said there will no doubt be critics and cynics.

“We simply have to live with that. All I can say is that we have learnt many, many things through the agonising process of the Royal Commission.

“We have learnt much from the pain of the past and many of the lessons that we've learnt are gathered up into this new initiative.

“All I can say is: this is a genuine attempt to learn from the past and ensure that the future in no way repeats the past; and that there is a kind of transparency and accountability and a consistency that have been patently lacking in the past.”

The outstanding governance and staffing positions for the new body are currently being finalised.

The second major announcement this week came from the Archdiocese of Melbourne which released details of changes to its child sex abuse compensation and support scheme, the Melbourne Response.

The two reforms which have grabbed most of the attention are the doubling of the scheme’s compensation cap, taking it to $150,000, and the significant decision to re-visit past compensation claims adjusting them so that past settlements are topped up in line with the new arrangements.

Melbourne Archbishop Denis Hart said the $15 million the Archdiocese had paid in compensation under the scheme was expected to rise to $31.7 million under the new system.

Archbishop Hart said the church's first priority was to try to care for the victims.

"We may be criticised but our intentions are sincere, and we can always do better," he said.

This has been a difficult challenge for the Archdiocese. Archbishop Hart has shown a willingness to listen and the leadership to make the appropriate changes.

I think it is now safe to say that across the Catholic Church in Australia we are seeing substantial changes in the way dioceses and religious orders respond to abuse survivors.

Marist College Canberra's lamentation ceremony
Francis Sullivan 17 November 2017

A very common question put to me from parishioners and interested people alike is how can healing happen for those who have been abused. Not being an expert in the field I quickly defer to others. But when it comes to asking what we as a Catholic community can do to begin a collective expression of healing some ideas do come to mind.

Firstly, with the help of this Royal Commission, we have had to publicly acknowledge the injustices and shame that has riddled our faith community. We have had to accept that there were structural reasons why abuse cases were covered up and victims treated poorly.

Secondly, we have recognised the need for atonement. That is, to make very public expressions of repentance and unqualified forgiveness. This is best expressed in heartfelt lamentation as a community.

The other night in the national capital I was privileged to be a part of the Marist College Canberra's lamentation ceremony for the victims at that school. It was a profoundly moving ceremony attended by some victims, their families, school staff, students and the broader school community. To describe it as being poignant somehow falls short.

The ceremony was beautifully crafted and paced. Silence intimately shaped the service. In that shared silence was a ground of knowing. Words were not needed to acknowledge the weight of history. Neither were they needed to express the depth of pain, suffering and despondency this scandal has wrought.

Yet into that silence came the words of lament and confession. They hang in the air like a ritual offering and then dissipate into the soul of the place. A soul ready for healing and ripe to make amends.

For me this is how collective healing takes shape. It nurtures a deeper response that will outlive these days and will foster a character and resolve for that school from here on in.

It also stands as a testament to the journey so many of us have been on.

For those who urged for and for those who planned that special night, thank you.

Criticism of Catholic support for national redress ludicrous
Francis Sullivan 11 November 2016

Since the Turnbull Government announced its plans to set up a national redress scheme for the survivors of institutional child sex abuse some, not many, lawyers and commentators, came out saying it is effectively a Catholic driven scheme designed to protect the bottom line.

It is certainly true that the Catholic Church backed the Royal Commission’s redress proposal for an independent, federal government-run scheme to investigate and determine redress payments 100 percent.

But to suggest we were able to bend the will of both the Commission and the Federal government to design a scheme that financially benefits the Church is, to put it kindly, ludicrous.

Here is how the development of the redress scheme played out. 

From September to November 2014 the Royal Commission held a series of roundtables to discuss redress and civil litigation reforms.

In January 2015 the Royal Commission released a consultation paper calling for submissions. It received more than 250.

In September 2015 the Commission released its final report in which it outlined as its preferred option an independent, federal government-run redress scheme to investigate and determine redress payments.

Of the submissions to its initial consultation paper only a handful, if that, indicated they did not support what turned out to be the Commission’s preferred option.

Among those organisations which, in one way or another, supported the Commission’s redress proposal were support and advocacy groups including Adults Surviving Child Sexual Abuse, CLAN, and Bravehearts. 

Significantly among the legal fraternity which supported the plan were, The Law Council of NSW, Knowmore, Shine Lawyers, Slater and Gordon Lawyers and others.

The idea that the Catholic Church has had any influence over these groups beggars belief and for some lawyers, arguably with a vested interest in not seeing a redress scheme introduced, flies in the face of logic. 

One lawyer who probably knows more about child sexual abuse and compensation than most is John Ellis, who was the subject of a Commission case study in March 2014 which examined the response of the Catholic Church to the complaint he made through Towards Healing.

And while Mr Ellis has represented many survivors in claims against the Church he is recently reported as saying the new scheme could save victims from being re-traumatised by protracted legal action.

"I see it as something that creates additional rights for people and doesn't in any way impinge on whatever rights they already have to bring proceedings through the courts," he said. 

We, along with many others, share this view and will not for one minute back away from supporting a national independent redress scheme. 

Nor will we back away from fully supporting any survivor who wants to take their claim to court. 

In fact, Church leaders have accepted a major policy reform which makes it clear that in civil cases church authorities must provide an entity that a survivor can make a claim against – this is a major reform and puts rest to the often made claim the ‘the church can’t be sued’. 

Despite what some might say there is no ‘backdoor’ financial benefit for the Church supporting national redress which does what so many for so long have been calling for: putting an end to the Church investigating itself and then determining payment.

All right-minded people should look at the Government’s proposal and support it for what it is or criticise it for what it lacks but making up ridiculous, unsupported and ill-informed allegations about the Church’s manipulation of the scheme doesn’t do anyone any good.

Commonwealth redress plan great start - but everyone needs to get on-board
Francis Sullivan 7 November 2016 

The announcement late last week by the Turnbull Government that it will establish and run a national redress scheme for the survivors of institutional child sexual abuse is a great decision that has the potential to be among the significant social policy reforms in recent history. 

Friday’s announcement has the potential to benefit tens of thousands of people now and into the future who have suffered the most damaging and tragic abuse – institutional child sexual abuse. 

The estimates are jaw dropping, more than 60,000 children abused in hundreds of different institutions across Australia for many decades. 

But the new scheme will only be truly effective if all institutions and all governments accept their responsibilities and commit to participating. 

The Catholic Church has a lot to answer for. For decades up to the 1990’s and in some cases beyond, we systematically covered up child sex abuse by members of our clergy. 

We consistently put the interests of the church as an institution ahead of the welfare and safety of children. Their suffering has been compounded and for many, their lives shattered. 

This did not just happen in the Catholic Church. We now know, thanks to the Royal Commission it was tragically common place across many other churches, schools, government institutions, sporting and cultural institutions. 

And now the Federal Government will provide a redress platform that all organisations responsible for the appalling abuse can use and, in a way, acknowledge and make some amends for the past.

But this will require one last great push from the Federal Government and continuing pressure from the community to ensure, regardless of where or when someone was abused, they will be able to seek justice through the Commonwealth scheme.

With all institutions taking part this scheme will succeed and it will deliver fair, consistent and generous redress for survivors.

If some institutions don’t take part it will be yet another blow to abuse survivors with some reaping the scheme’s benefits while others are left to suffer further defeats and humiliations. 

A case in point is the South Australian Government. Before the ink was dry on the announcement, the South Australian Government has already indicated it will not take part.

This is appalling, whatever the justification.

If SA Premier, Jay Weatherill, is so convinced his state has fairly and comprehensively responded to adults abused as children in that state’s schools and other government-run facilities then well done. 

But if, as is more likely the case, there are hundreds of survivors of abuse in SA government-run institutions who have received inadequate or no compensation, then he should be ashamed for so readily dismissing this proposal. 

He, along with his attorney general and other senior government ministers need to put their principles and convictions before the advice of their bureaucrats and bean counters and become part of the scheme.

It is now vitally important that all institutions in which abuse occurred, as well as all the State and Territory governments, get on board.

This is by far the best chance we, as a community, and particularly the institutions responsible for the abuse will have to do the right thing to give abuse survivors the financial support they need to have a crack at a half decent life. 

New register of priests and brothers important step forward
Francis Sullivan 27 October 2016

This week the Australian Catholic Ministry Register reached a milestone with nearly 500 priests and male religious now registered on the state-of-the-art data based designed to make it easier for bishops and other religious leaders to check the background of priests and brothers exercising a ministry in another diocese or church body.

This is an issue that has been highlighted by the Royal Commission and is also a provision within the Towards Healing protocol.

In many of the Royal Commission case studies which have involved the Catholic Church we have regularly heard about priests or brothers arriving in a diocese or school without the local church leadership having any real understanding of their background, and in many cases, their history of child sexual abuse.

This might seem extraordinary but the facts are that for many years past bishops and religious leaders were all too willing to simply ‘move on’ child abusing priests and brothers who should have been reported to the police and put before the courts.

What we now have with the Australian Catholic Ministry Register is, for the first time, an up-to-date online database which can tell a bishop or congregation leader if a priest or brother is of ‘good standing’.

For the purpose of the register ‘good standing’ effectively means they have all the relevant statutory background checks including a working with children check, and that there are no barriers to their being granted ministry in another place. It now provides the receiving church organisation with the ability to carry out a current check whenever desired.

At any one time there are numerous priests and brothers moving around the country.

Some are travelling to perform weddings, baptisms or funerals for family and friends others might be taking up temporary positions in schools while others might be moving to new permanent parish priest appointments.

This new data base is a huge leap forward in helping a religious leader better understand the history and status of these clerics and religious entering their diocese.

Earlier this year the first priests and brothers were listed on the register.

As I have said there are now nearly 500 on the list and hopefully within the next year or so most of the remaining priests and brothers will be registered under the authority of their bishop or congregational leader.

The Australian Catholic Ministry Register reflects a new approach to ensuring priests and brothers are accountable for their past behaviour and history.

As this register grows it will become increasingly difficult for a priest or a brother to try and hide past problems by simply moving to another part of the country.

This initiative is another clear indication of the changing face of the Catholic Church in Australia.

We are now regularly seeing religious leaders putting in place new policies, employing new people and sharply focusing their attention on ensuring their diocese or congregation is as safe as possible for children and vulnerable adults.

Child to Child abuse the latest Commission case study
Francis Sullivan 19 October 2016

Later this week the Royal Commission will start its 45^th public hearing which will inquire into the response to children with problematic or harmful sexual behaviours in schools.

The hearing will investigate 10 different institutions including seven schools, two government agencies and the Association of Independent Schools NSW.

The focus will initially be on The King’s School, Parramatta, Trinity Grammar School, Summer Hill and Shalom Christian College in Queensland. Three public primary schools in NSW will also be examined.

Importantly the systems and policies within the Department of Education NSW, Association of Independent Schools NSW and the Department of Family and Community Services NSW will also be examined.

While the Royal Commission has advised that St Ignatius’ College, Riverview is not being investigated for any abuse at the school, it will be looking into the way the school responded to a student who is alleged to have been sexually abused at another school.

Child to child abuse is an issue and while sexual development and exploration is a normal part of healthy adolescence it can go badly wrong with some young people engaging in sexual behaviour that is not within the 'normal' bounds of development.

This can often take different forms but ultimately has the potential to be extremely harmful. The point at which 'normal' sexual behaviour becomes abusive cannot always be decided based on the behaviour alone.

As with most forms of abuse, sexual or otherwise, the three factors of equality, consent and coercion, and to what extent they are present in the relationship between the young people involved in the sexual interaction, are important.

The rate of sexual abuse of young people by young people has been difficult to determine but some studies suggest that these types of offences could account for up to half of offences against children and around a third of rapes of adolescent girls and adult women.

This area of abuse, while not as prominent or discussed to the same extent as other forms of child sexual abuse, is significant and needs to be examined.

And the extent to which it takes place in schools, the effectiveness of policies to guard against it and an understanding of its impacts all needs to be looked at with the same forensic intensity the Commission has brought to its other case studies

Call for national redress getting stronger and louder
13 October 2016

Earlier this week The Australian reported on a letter written to Prime Minister Turnbull signed by a coalition of medical experts and religious, business and charity leaders calling on him to take action on establishing a national redress scheme for child sexual abuse victims.

Also this week the Ballarat Courier has reported on a leading Victorian judge, Felicity Hampel, calling for the urgent roll-out of a national redress scheme for victims of childhood sexual abuse.

And in Parliamentary question time last month Labor MP, Tanya Plibersek, pressed the Prime Minister on a national redress scheme.

There is clearly a growing call for a national scheme to provide redress for child abuse survivors which we all need to get behind.

In the covering letter to the PM which was coordinated by Dr Cathy Kezelman, President/Director of Blue Knot, the 70 signatories say ‘the Royal Commission has exposed a terrible wound in the country’s treatment of so many children. In our view, following on from the work of the Royal Commission, a national redress scheme will deliver another means by which victims, whose lives have been shattered, can finally begin to heal.’

The letter and the attached document lay out a clear argument for a national scheme that would provide consistent and fair redress. It argues the need for a national scheme not just a ‘framework’ which the Commission considers a second best option.

The letter urges the Prime Minister to seize this “moment in the life of a nation” and that failing to do so would represent a betrayal of the trust these victims have placed in the Commission.

Its signatories include the president of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists, Malcolm Hopwood, as well as senior Jewish leaders and those from the Catholic, Anglican, Baptist and Uniting churches. The Council signed the letter on behalf of the Catholic Church in Australia.

Other signatories include internationally respected trauma expert Warwick Middleton and the chief executives of Families Australia, Childwise, the Australian Council of Social Service and the Australian College of Mental Health Nurses.

“There are moments in the life of a nation when there is a once-only opportunity to advance its people, regardless of their social or economic status,” the petition reads. “If this opportunity is squandered, the nation and its people are diminished and such progress may never be achieved.”

Interestingly, the Ballarat Courier this week reports a leading Victorian judge has also called for the urgent roll-out of a national redress scheme for victims of childhood sexual abuse.

In the sentencing of disgraced paedophile priest 73-year-old Robert Claffey, at the Geelong County Court last week, Judge Felicity Hampel called for the establishment of a redress scheme.

She also commented on the need for the Church to cooperate with the Commission and the Victorian Parliamentary Inquiry “I can only hope, that amongst the outcomes of the Victorian Parliamentary Inquiry and the Royal Commission is the significant moral change necessary for the church to put the interests of victims before the institution… to actively cooperate with independent and transparent enquires into allegations of clerical sexual abuse in the future.”

Labor MP Tanya Plibersek during parliamentary Question Time late last month, asked the PM about a national redress scheme. He remained noncommittal on a single national approach coordinated by the Commonwealth.

It is expected the federal government will receive advice from its redress taskforce by the end of the year.

For more than a year the Royal Commission’s recommendations around redress for child sexual abuse have sat on the desk of the Prime Minister, state premiers, their attorneys general, treasurers and public servants. The delay is an indictment on our political leadership.

As I’ve said many times, now is the time for our political leaders to face the challenge, to honour the suffering of tens of thousands of children and young people and to get on with the job of delivering a world-first, national redress scheme which will deliver, after many decades, the justice abuse survivors require and deserve.

Major literature reviews on child sex abuse reveal interesting trends and findings
6 October 2016 

Over the past week or so the Royal Commission released two very interesting reviews of current literature dealing with child sexual abuse.

The first deals with the risk and protective factors for child sexual abuse and the second with the characteristics, motivations and offending behaviour of perpetrators.

The first review, Risk Profiles for Institutional Child Sexual Abuse: A literature review, looks at some 400 different studies and found a few key consistencies stood out, including that children aged nine to 15 are the most at risk of being sexually abused while in the care of an institution.

The review also found that being female, from a low socio-economic family background, having a prior history of abuse or an intellectual disability were risk factors.

Another major risk factor is that screening processes, used to exclude people from joining organisations, are not as effective as widely believed and are unable to pick up perpetrators with no criminal history or a history that does not include sexual offences.

The review identified a lack of clearly defined policies, or variability in the comprehensiveness and appropriateness of child-safe policies.

The report found that while there was no "typical" sex offender, deviant sexual interests, distorted attitudes about sex and poor social skills were common, with perpetrators in many cases having a strong need for power and control.

The second review, Evidence and frameworks for understanding perpetrators of institutional child sexual abuse, in part deals with child sexual abuse in religious institutions.

It found the largest amount of literature available concerning clergy abusers describes abuse within the Catholic Church.

In contrast, there appears to be limited information available regarding perpetrators in educational, sporting and out of home care settings with no research found concerning child sexual abuse in scouting institutions, or vulnerable child groups including those with disabilities and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children.

The available research does however have things to say about patterns of offending by Catholic clergy, most of which is based on the major US John Jay study undertaken in 2008.

When looking at the Catholic Church the pattern of sexual abuse committed by clergy does seem to be distinctive, in that the most victims were adolescent boys.

A situational explanation for this is supported by some evidence, including that churches provided many more opportunities for male sexual abusers to be alone with boys than with girls.

The John Jay study showed that from 1950 to 2002, approximately 4 per cent of all priests who were active in ministry throughout this time had allegations of sexual abuse made against them.

Similar patterns of victim age and gender to those from the Catholic Church were found in a study of 191 cases of reported child sexual abuse by 135 sexual abusers in the Anglican Church of Australia.

Similarly, a Canadian study of 33 clergy from various backgrounds found that 39 per cent had multiple victims, the majority of whom (67 per cent) were male, with a mean of 11.67 and a modal age of 13 years for all victims.

Clerical child sexual abusers have been compared with other sexual offenders in two studies, from which the researchers concluded that clerical and lay child sexual abusers are ‘more similar than different’.

The report goes on to draw a range of conclusions and observations about child sexual abuse in many different institutions and provides an interesting picture of the current understanding of abuse.

In addition to improving child protection measures one of the other key issues for our community is what we do now to provide all the help we can for abuse survivors.

And from the perspective of the Council key to this is providing fair and just redress. As the Royal Commission enters its final stages this must remain at the very front of our thinking.

Challenges ahead for institutional Church leadership
29 September 2016

For the last month we have been consumed by two case studies, back to back, in the Royal Commission. On anyone’s reckoning this was an unrelenting examination of how the local Catholic officials in the dioceses of Newcastle, Armidale, Sydney and Parramatta handled abuse by clerics and religious brothers.

Even after nearly four years in this job, it still confounds me to witness the way the institutional Church really was not up to the mark in properly dealing with perpetrators, alerting authorities and justly dealing with victims and their families.

This all too familiar tale is indeed a deep wound in the heart of the Church. It has undermined the confidence of Catholics, clergy and those in religious life. It has challenged our understanding of what the Church was about. Hypocrisy is hard to swallow.

At times like this people want answers and a sense of reassurance that real changes have happened and will continue to happen. Frankly, that task will take more than a few public statements from Church leaders. It will require a demonstrated roll out of practical steps that show that vigilance, prevention, training, supervision and accountability measures are all in place for the safeguarding of children and vulnerable people.

Even more, it will require tangible signs that leaders take seriously the task of professionalising decision making, record keeping and legitimate follow up with victims and their families.

Most importantly, it will require the Church’s leaders to show that even when the Royal Commission has run its course that there will not be a complacent return to ‘business as usual’!

Fortunately, the bishops and religious leaders are taking the real steps to modernise how professional standards and safeguarding are administered in the Church. They are also actively supporting calls for independently administered redress schemes. This does give hope where so little light has been for too long.

As we now prepare for the final hearing of the Catholic Church in early 2017 we need to openly embrace the difficult questions around why the scandal occurred in the Church to the extent that it did, and why it was handled the way that it was. There is no point raising issues unless we are prepared to learn from them and to put things right.

This is our time and this is our calling.

Farrell hearing, reform and more
22 September 2016

This week we’ll hear the final evidence in case study 44 about former priest, John Farrell and the response of the dioceses of Armidale and Parramatta to allegations of abuse. 

Like all of the hearings it’s been extraordinarily difficult for survivor witnesses and their families and for communities affected by abuse. 

After three and a half years, this is the last public hearing that will focus exclusively on the Catholic Church, with the exception of the final hearing in February next year about the Church’s response to the issues emerging from the Royal Commission’s hearings and research and policy work. 

It’s up to the Royal Commission now to try and come to some sort of conclusion in the months ahead for final report in December next year and the Council will continue to provide whatever support is needed in order to do that. 

Since the Royal Commission’s work began in early 2013, Church leaders and their agencies have put in place many changes – policy, structural and governance – to standards that relate to children, young people and otherwise vulnerable people. 

Some changes tweak existing arrangements, others have heralded a complete overhaul of the Church Authority’s approach. 

And optimistic as I may have seemed about the changes, announcing good intentions is one thing, actually making sure those changes translate into a safer, better place for children and young people is another. 

It will take time and commitment to ensure its not just business as usual once the Royal Commission’s spotlight is extinguished. 

A picture tells a thousand words - care leavers need access to their records
15 September 2016

Over the past almost four years, as the Royal Commission has explored the way the Catholic Church and other institutions have responded to child sexual abuse one of the key issues I hear from survivors is the difficulty they have trying to get hold of their personal records.

This is particularly true if they were in foster care, orphanages, children’s homes, missions and other child residential care facilities and unfortunately it seems to be particularly true if the institution was run by the Catholic Church. 

Most of us have family photo books, if we put in just a little effort we can scrape together a ‘family tree’ of sorts. Indeed most of us can pick up a phone and call a relative, a parent, a sibling, a cousin. We have a family history that we can reference and, in part, can tell us why we are who we are. 

This is not the case for many kids who were brought up in orphanages, children’s homes, missions and foster care last century or as they are known, Care Leavers. Many know nothing about their parents, if they have brothers and sisters, or even where they came from.

Imagine going through life having no understanding or appreciation of your roots. Nothing to hold on to, to provide an anchor linking you back to a time and place. We are our history and when we have no understanding of it, I’m told it is like being rudderless, a compass with a needle that just spins round and round. 

Recently I was told about a 57-year-old Care Leaver who has never met his parents, any of his five siblings or for that matter seen a photo of them. 

He needs his records so he can find his family and find himself, to try to understand why he is different in many ways to his peers. He needs the records to try to make sense of his childhood and to give himself a sense of ‘family’ and an understanding of the ‘why?’ questions in his life.

Having these records is also an important part of abuse survivors being able to tell their stories to the Royal Commission – something all our Church leaders are on the record fully supporting. 

But when they ask an institution for their records they hit many a brick wall, many are met with hostility and frustration, delays and excessive costs. And if they are provided with some records they are often so heavily redacted they are next to useless. 

To these care leavers, it looks and feels like these same institutions are continuing to put their reputations ahead of the welfare of their former residents. For some it feels like the institution is all too willing to continue to abuse them. 

For the life of me I can’t understand why some Catholic organisations in which young kids lived, were cared for or were educated wouldn’t do all they can to help them understand their family history.

If for no other reason – and there are many other reasons – it would put them on the right side of the issue.

Certainly in the past 15 years or so, many Catholic organisations have done a lot to make sure care leavers get better access to their records. But some still have a long way to go.

I’m often asked at the parish meetings I attend and in other places what it is we as Catholics can do to help abuse survivors?

Well here is one simple project – if you have any influence over your local school, parish or any other place were there might be some historical records then let them know these past records should be available, and easily available, to now grown adults.

Many do, but everyone in any institution needs to understand and respect the value of these precious documents, for many they provide the only glimpse into their history. And while these records will sometimes deliver pain and very mixed emotions they are vital in piecing together shattered lives.

Newcastle hearing shows we've got a long way to go
7 September 2016

We are presently involved in the 13th case study involving the Catholic Church in this Royal Commission. Case Study 43 is looking at the response of church authorities in the Maitland Newcastle region to allegations of child sexual abuse by clergy and religious.

The detailed testimonies from abuse survivors once again have been shocking, confronting and shameful.

The mere fact that middle aged men courageously retold their stories in a hushed and shocked court room was poignant enough.

That their stories were just another set of entries into the sordid history of the sexual abuse of children within the Catholic Church adds to the corrosive impact this scandal has had on the credibility of the Church.

Just as with other churches with histories of child abuse, the fact that it did occur and that it was mishandled, even covered up, severed the sacred trust these churches held with the community.

Time and time again the integrity of Catholic Church entities, be they dioceses or religious orders, has been called into question.

When actions don't match rhetoric credibility is the casualty.

The "trust us" test is lost.

Sadly this is now such a familiar scenario as each case study has revealed. Even though the events in question occurred decades ago, their impact on the moral character of the Church has had a long-term impact. Whether the issue is sexual ethics, justice or even the sanctity of marriage, the Church's pronouncements are shadowed by the events portrayed in the Royal Commission. 

Until the community perceives that the Church has truly atoned for this scandal, much of what it says will fall on deaf ears.

This is demoralising for all those who toil in Catholic organisations to deliver essential services in the community.

That said there is a distinction between the Church services and ministries of today and how some were conducted in the past. Catholic schools, hospitals, welfare services go to great lengths to create safe environments for children. In many cases they are at the forefront of best practice in this area. This goes some way towards restoring trust in the community.

However the Church leadership needs to keep pushing the envelope to demonstrate that the culture that led to the scandal is being addressed and remedied. A challenge of the highest proportion.

Also this week, I see Bishop Paul Bird in Ballarat has announced that the estate of the former bishop Ronald Mulkearns, which was left to the Diocese, will all go to supporting victims of abuse. The estate is reported to be valued in the order of $2million. This is a welcome announcement and will, hopefully, mean that abuse survivors in Ballarat will have greater access to pastoral and other services offered by the Diocese and also receive continuing compensation.

I’ll take this opportunity to correct last week’s blog in which I listed a number of dioceses that have been included in Royal Commission hearings. Townsville was included in that list, but has not been the subject of a Royal Commission hearing.

Governments and redress
1 September 2016

The Maitland-Newcastle public hearing started yesterday. It will be the Commission’s 43^rd public hearing and the 14^th time a Catholic Church dioceses or congregation has been the single focus of a hearing – well over a third of all hearings so far.

The number of hearings focusing on the Catholic Church is in direct proportion to the number of people who have spoken to the Royal Commission in private sessions saying that they were abused in a Catholic school, parish, out-of-home care or diocese.

There can be no suggestion that this focus is anything other than a factor of the appalling extent of child sexual abuse that took place in the 1950s, 60s 70s and 80s within Catholic Church authorities.

This latest hearing is examining abuse perpetrated by Father Vincent Ryan and Marist Brothers including Francis Cable (Brother Romuald) and Thomas Butler (Brother Patrick) in local parishes and schools.

We have already heard evidence from one survivor who experienced the worst sort of abuse at the hands of Ryan, a truly despicable man.

Of the 43 public hearings so far at least 35 have focused on non-government institutions: Catholics, Anglicans, Hillsong, Scouts, YMCA, Swimming Australia and the like.

Only a handful of case studies have focused specifically on government institutions including the NSW Department of Community Services, youth training and reception centres run by the Victorian Government, allegations of abuse in the criminal justice system, and the Australian Defence Force.

It is true that police agencies around the country and to a lesser extent some government welfare departments, have featured in some non-government case studies.

But it remains a mystery as to why abuse in Government schools and other institutions doesn’t seem to be as prominent as in non-government organisations.

This is particularly confounding when you consider that during the key decades of the 1950s, 60s, 70s and 80s, when child sexual abuse seems to have been at a peak in Australia, that Australian governments educated around three quarters of our children and ran around a third of the residential out-of-home care facilities for children such as orphanages, farm schools, refuges and the like.

Yet governments have remained largely unchallenged during the Commission’s proceedings. Not one government Minister, past or present, has appeared.

As I said, the Commission decides on case studies largely based on what it hears in private sessions and the facts are that most people who have come forward have disclosed abuse in non-government institutions.

Maybe this is because of justifiable media and other attention on abuse in churches over the years, not so much on government institutions.

But whatever the reason, this all leads to the question of redress for child sexual abuse survivors.

For more than a year the Royal Commission’s recommendations around redress for child sexual abuse have sat on the desk of the Prime Minister, state premiers, their attorneys general, treasurers and public servants.

So far we have heard little from our law makers other than motherhood, non-specific general support for redress or flat out refusal to support the commission’s preferred redress model of a Commonwealth-run, independent national scheme in which compensation is determined and then paid for by the institution in which the abuse took place.

This is a model supported widely by survivor groups and largely by the institutions in which much of the abuse occurred.

Other than concerns over the cost to individual state governments there is no fathomable reason why governments should not support this scheme, certainly none that have been articulated.

Like so many other institutions around the country, governments have run facilities in which children were abused – there is a parallel between the responsibility of government leaders and church leaders, the heads of sporting organisations, the chairs of private schools and others to ensure that it never happens again.

They also have the same responsibility to be part of a process that delivers justice. At the moment the best way we have available to us to do this is through the Royal Commission’s preferred redress model.

The Commission has demonstrated beyond any doubt that child sexual abuse is a national issue, that it is not confined to jurisdictions or to institutions.

Anyone who has had any exposure to the work of the Commission, who has read anything about child sexual abuse or who has experienced it either directly or indirectly would put it at the very top of the great moral challenges of our time.

And, as we have heard on at least a couple of occasions, great moral challenges require immediate, decisive action driven by national leadership.

Now is the time for our political leaders to face the challenge, to honour the suffering of tens of thousands of children and young people and to get on with the job of delivering a world-first, national redress scheme which will deliver, after many decades, the justice abuse survivors require and deserve.

Maitland Newcastle public hearing
25 August 2016

At about this time four years ago, the crisis of child sexual abuse in Australia had reached boiling point.

The Victorian Parliamentary Inquiry was well underway, the Special Commission for Inquiry into the Catholic Diocese of Maitland Newcastle was about to commence and there were overwhelming calls for an Australia-wide royal commission into child sex abuse.

Much of that agitation was coming from the Hunter region, and the role of The Herald in Newcastle in driving the public advocacy for a Royal Commission cannot be underestimated.

During this time the crimes and cover-ups within the Catholic Church in Newcastle were rightly laid bare for all to see.

Now, after almost four years, as the Royal Commission enters its final phase, it, too, is turning its attention to what happened in the Catholic Church in Newcastle.

From next week the Commission will be looking into the response of Catholic Church authorities in the Maitland-Newcastle region to allegations of sexual abuse by clergy and religious.

The damage to survivors and victims, caused by the child abuse scandal can never be fully expressed or understood. Confused identities, broken homes, failed careers, unfulfilled dreams, and undermined communities.

The scandal has shaken the Catholic Church across Australia to its very foundations.

In the past three and a half years I’ve had well over a hundred meetings with different groups directly related to the work of the Commission. I’ve met with survivor groups, parish groups, lawyers, and people working in education and social services. And I’ve also met with priests, religious and volunteers who work in local communities around Australia.

Significantly, most of those public meetings have been held in local parishes, organised by local Catholics. The depth to which the child sex abuse scandal has affected people coming to these meetings, mostly ordinary, practicing Catholics, is profound.

The anger at the Church leaders who failed to protect children and who covered up for offending priests, religious and others is more than evident. The demands for the current Church leaders to be fully open and transparent is unmistakable and the sadness and compassion for the people who have suffered, and who suffer still, as a result of the abuse is palpable.

In places like the Hunter, Ballarat and regional Western Australia, the Commission has exposed the abuse of power within the Catholic Church and the depravity that that unleashed.

While the Commission has been going about its work, the media has been documenting events, and survivors and victims have continued their call for justice.

Many people could be forgiven for thinking Catholic and other major institutions have been sitting on their hands as the extent and depth of the abuse has been exposed.

At least for the Catholic Church this is not true.

We’ve developed and put in place new guidelines to be used when victims and survivors want to revisit their claims. And there are new civil litigation guidelines that help church authorities identify an entity for victims and survivors to sue. The Church has also maintained its call for an independent, national redress scheme, which would provide fair and just compensation for abuse victims.

We’ve also seen widespread implementation of safeguarding officers and structures within dioceses and religious orders.

And while the Maitland Newcastle Dioceses has had in place for some time a ground-breaking approach to the Church’s response to child sexual abuse, the Catholic Church, Australia-wide will never be able to do enough to alleviate the pain and suffering that so many children and young people have endured and continue to live with.

What I hope we are seeing at this point in the Royal Commission’s work is not just policy responses to emerging issues, but the beginning of a genuine cultural shift in the Catholic Church and other institutions that have been exposed by the work of this Royal Commission and the myriad other inquiries. 

 Government inertia all too apparent
18 August 2016

This week the Royal Commission issued a rare statement on the question of a public hearing into the sexual abuse of children in immigration detention centres. 

Commissioner Peter McClellan made the comments in response to recent media reports which detailed hundreds of allegations of abuse on Nauru. He said the Royal Commission has an ongoing investigation in relation to the Department of Immigration and Border Protection’s response to allegations of child sexual abuse in detention centres and that whether or not a public hearing is warranted has not been determined. 

It beggars belief that as the country’s longest running, most expensive Royal Commission was underway into the sexual abuse of children in institutions, both major parties sanctioned the detention of children and young people in circumstances that were far from safe, especially for vulnerable people. 

It’s hard not to see the situation on Nauru as another example of the inertia of governments to deal with glaring issues of abuse. 

And this is not the only example of government inertia. The Federal Government has had the Royal Commission’s final report calling for a national redress scheme since September last year, and we’ve heard nothing, unless you call a commitment to look at the recommendations a response. Meanwhile, victims and survivors live day-to-day with the uncertainty and disadvantage that so often shadows the lives of people living with the impact of childhood abuse. 

On a brighter note, last Friday I was in Perth where I had interesting conversations with Catholic Education Office executives, principles and interested personnel.  Later this week I will visit a parish in Hunter’s Hill in Sydney to hear from the local community there.

As I travel around the country talking to people, I am encouraged by the grit and determination shown by the people at the coalface of what is our Catholic Church. People in our schools, social services, in parishes and in other ministries. They can hear what the Royal Commission is saying. And they are getting on with the job of addressing the issues in their own backyard. 

Politican leaders continue to duck and weave around redress
11 August 2016

This week the South Australian Government released its Royal Commission report into the state’s child protection systems.

Last week the Federal Government announced a Royal Commission into the Northern Territory’s juvenile justice system.

And nationally, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child sexual abuse continues to uncover the way in which many, many different organisations dealt with historical complaints of abuse.

Never before has our community and our lawmakers’ attention been so sharply focused on the failures of individuals and institutions to protect children.

The report from the South Australian Royal Commission, which highlights five case studies of appalling failure and abuse, is damning. 

South Australian Premier Jay Weatherill has apologised for the failures of the government agency charged with protecting children, Families SA, and said he will implement the Commission’s recommendations.

He said his Government accepts full responsibility for the failings of the state’s child protection system in keeping children safe.

‘We failed to protect the children left in the care of Shannon McCoole. We failed in our responsibility to keep these, and other children safe from harm. I am sorry for failing in this most fundamental duty to the children in our care,’ he said.

‘Now after all that we have seen over so many reports we have to accept that where there are vulnerable people there are going to be predators and sadly that might mean that we are going to have to behave in a different way,’ he said. 

Similar sentiments were expressed by Prime Minister Turnbull when he announced the Northern Territory Royal Commission last week.

‘Australians were shocked and appalled by the images of mistreatment of children at the Don Dale Youth Detention Centre in the Northern Territory. There can be no greater responsibility bestowed on an adult, a parent, a government institution, than the protection of a child in their care,’ the Prime Minister told the nation on July 28.

While the comments from both Premier Weatherill and Prime Minister Turnbull should be applauded, what neither are saying anything constructive about is the national Royal Commission’s recommendations on redress for child sexual abuse survivors.

Why is it that both these consummate politicians are all too willing to stand up and make comments and commitments when they are directly in the firing line but when they can weave around the national child sexual abuse agenda they are all too quick to duck for cover?

For well over six months the Royal Commission’s recommendations on redress for child sexual abuse survivors have been sitting on the desks of Malcolm Turnbull, Jay Weatherill and all the state and territory leaders. So far we have seen little or no meaningful action to put them in place.

It is all very good to announce a Royal Commission or some other major inquiry into any number of politically difficult issues so as to be seen as taking a problem seriously.

But after the time, expense and in the case of the child sex abuse commission the extreme pain and anguish for abuse survivors, becomes old news, the shame of inaction starts to be shared by both the institutions where the abuse took place and now our political leaders who are effectively turning a blind eye to the continuing suffering of so many adults who were abused as young children by institutions they should have been able to trust.  

There's optimism on the horizon
2 August 2016 

This week Fr Hans Zollner sj, who is President of the Commission for Child Protection at the Gregorian University in Rome, visited Ballarat to hear directly from victims and survivors. The visit of a delegate from Rome was seen as significant by many in the Ballarat community.

The Ballarat Courier reports Fr Zollner pledged his personal support to help Ballarat become a leading centre for healing, a commitment welcomed by Ballarat child abuse survivors, who said the church was a major contributing factor of much community damage and needed to be part of the healing process.

Another survivor acknowledged a lot has been done by the Church and that at some point we need to stop looking back and start looking forward. He said some schools that had been the least safe were now the safest.

These are encouraging words, coming from some of the strongest Ballarat advocates and give me some hope that the healing process, slow though it might be, is possible and that as more concrete measures are put in place victims and survivors can feel more confident that children are safer in Australian institutions including the Catholic Church.

For the past three and a half years the Royal Commission has done a mighty job uncovering some of the country’s darkest secrets. It has exposed crimes and cover-ups, and damaging institutional cultures that saw vulnerable children suffer the most degrading experiences.

The revelations have shocked communities around Australia and internationally. It’s been a traumatic time for victims and survivors as past crimes have been brought to the fore. The devastating life-long impact for many has been well documented. And for others, memories of the childhood experience gnaw at the edges of what appears to be a more functional life.

We know the Catholic Church rightly features in the Royal Commission’s inquiry. It’s responsible for around a third of the public hearings and figures in around a third of the stories told in private sessions to the Commissioners.

It’s a sorry history. But as I’ve said in recent blogs, the last 20 years have seen a significant shift in the Church’s approach to allegations of abuse and to child protection issues more broadly. And since the Royal Commission began its work in early 2013 many dioceses and religious orders have put in place very specific measures to make sure the protection of children and vulnerable people stays front of mind.

The Ballarat case study is the longest running hearing being considered by the Commission. Ballarat has been referred to as an epicentre of abuse and some of the most notorious offending priests operated out of that Diocese. The intergenerational impact on some parts of that community is unquestionable.

The positive comments from some of Ballarat’s most active survivors indicate to me that if the Church works cooperatively and with good will with the survivors of abuse then we can move forward and positive things can happen. But we have to keep at it, there can be no let up.

Leaders need to step up on redress
26 July 2016

With the announcement this week that the Federal Government will set up a Royal Commission to look into the abuse of young people in the Northern Territory juvenile detention system, we yet again see the national government, in theory, step up to protect young people.

Just over three and a half years ago the Federal Government, under Julia Gillard, established the child abuse Royal Commission – many would say a long overdue move.

What is now just as long overdue is the Federal Government’s response to the first final recommendation of the Royal Commission – the establishment of a national redress scheme.

Rhetoric aside, the government has not delivered even one threshold decision towards an operative redress scheme for all victims of institutional child sexual abuse. Prime Minister Turnbull, a public advocate for victims of child abuse, has not even said whether the Commonwealth will provide redress for those abused in Commonwealth agencies.

More to the point, the Commonwealth officials seem hell-bent on shifting any substantial efforts on establishing a scheme to the states and territories, whom in turn are wary at best to be dragged into a program where the Commonwealth sits on its hands but wants to lap up any political capital in the process.

From the very outset the Catholic Church has said that an independent umpire is needed to establish redress for victims. The credibility of the Church and all other institutions is too far gone to have any other alternative.

Victims groups, academics and survivor organisations are at one calling for a national redress scheme. The Royal Commissioners see the obvious sense in such a scheme. The major churches, private organisations and even the legal fraternity support national redress. The outrage so powerfully present in the Commission’s case studies echoes the need to act swiftly, fairly and generously.

Yet the political class stays mute and hopes that their inertia will wear everyone else down.

Needless to say that it is just the type of disengagement from elected politicians that has lead our system close to a gridlock. If an issue isn’t hot in the polls then it doesn’t get attention. If the public voices are not loud enough, or important enough, then too bad.

Leaders need to get out in front and challenge the moral sentiment of the time. The voices of those who have suffered are calling us all to step up. Can our politicians follow?

Respect is central to reform
21 July 2016

When it comes to inquiries, the Royal Commission is the main game for child sexual abuse. This is the case even though the majority of abuse occurs in domestic settings where the community’s authorities are seemingly fighting a losing battle.

Even the Commission has its limitations with many major institutions remaining unexamined, particularly the public education system.

So in the end we will have a snapshot, albeit a very comprehensive one, of how institutions dealt with child abuse cases.

Hopefully we will also have a consensus, facilitated by the Commission, on what is expert advice as to how institutions prevent and if need be, manage child sexual abuse cases. To that end the extraordinary exercise that is this Royal Commission can rightly be seen as an investment in the safety and well-being of children.

Importantly, for that investment to render a good return, institutional governance must remain at the forefront of reform.

Too often the case studies have revealed significant shortcomings in the governance and oversight of organisations where managers and others have not reported to authorities when they should have.

Too often, boards of governance seem to have taken their collective eyes off the main game of ensuring that compliance procedures and regulatory standards were being met.

Too often not enough rigour and scrutiny was taken by boards in the performance of executives and those in positions of responsibility.

This has applied in Church organisations, charitable bodies, private companies and government departments alike. Plainly, the interests of children did not rate enough to ensure that organisational negligence didn’t prevail.

With well less than a year of public hearings left the Commission will intensify its scrutiny of organisational culture and practice. On a superficial level some would argue that having the right protocols in place with the right reporting procedures will ensure safe organisations. The Royal Commission case studies show that not to be so. What does work better is a concerted commitment by organisations to develop and sustain cultures where everyone is respected and where everyone is safe. This also requires resources and dedication. It usually comes about through a continuous education program and a commitment to on-going best practice.

But it starts with an unwavering respect for the dignity of everyone involved in the organisation. Abuse of any kind is wrong. It is never justified nor is it ever excusable. Child safe environments should, in turn, become healthy workplaces for everyone. Another decent return from this Royal Commission.

We've come a long way
13 July 2016

This week the Royal Commission has commenced a case study into residential care for children with disabilities. The Sisters of the Good Samaritan Mater Dei School has been part of the study.

Without wishing to take anything away from the actual cases themselves I thought it was important to reflect on what a difference time has made to the handling of child sexual abuse cases.

Throughout the Royal Commission hearings we have been shocked and confronted by the way institutions have either bungled the handling or deliberately covered up the abuse that occurred. Sometimes it beggared belief.

Even the most strident critics would concede that these days the vigilance and hyper sensitivity to issues of child sexual abuse are light years in front of the mindsets of yesteryear. Government regulations are far tighter, reporting requirements are stricter and prevention strategies are now commonplace.

When I listened to the evidence of Mater Dei's principal, Tony FitzGerald, I heard an extremely dedicated professional, with an obvious commitment to children with a disability, calmly and clearly outline policies and procedures that the school has in place to ensure safeguarding of the students.

And while we will need to wait for the Royal Commission to deliver its final report into this case study to fully understand what happened at the school at the time of the abuse and since, the evidence from Mr Fitzgerald was impressive and again demonstrated just how far the Catholic school system has come from the days when children were abused by deceitful and manipulative clerics and others.

Such was the strength of his evidence that I thought it also demonstrated the degree to which school staff, through their leadership groups, are prepared to go to give their local communities and parent bodies the confidence in the safeguarding of their children.

We know that there are the regular in-service training for staff and the continual awareness raising amongst the children themselves about 'stranger danger' and its modern equivalents. We also know that staff are trained to be alert to any signs that a child may be at risk or even worse.

And it is important to note that some children may well be at risk in domestic situations. Unfortunately that is where the majority of child abuse occurs. Having trained staff in schools who are able to detect the signs of abuse can be a very important safety net in the welfare of children in general.

None of us are in the business of rationalising the past and the horrors that have occurred. Neither are we seeking to contextualise the mishandling and cover ups.

The said, pointing to the massive changes that have occurred is important. The community needs confidence and hope and we need to affirm the areas in which real, effective change is happening.

We need to encourage those who are ' pushing the envelope' to make instructions safer, smarter and to become places where the littlest and most fragile voices are heard and heeded.

This is part of today's story and it is an integral component to the national witness this Royal Commission seeks to deliver.

A community of Friars walking together on a spiritual path
6 July 2016

This week I had the pleasure of addressing the mid-term assembly of the Capuchin Friars held at Baulkham Hills. Men from ministries in all parts of the world attended.

Like so many others they were heartsick with the reality of the clerical abuse scandal and the shame it has brought on all of us in the Church. At the same time there was a realistic hope that positive changes to Church procedures, processes and culture can come.

Being amongst this exclusively male, celibate group where dedication to a spiritual way of living and service to others are at the forefront of their lives was very inspiring. Even more so when at least half of those present had lived this commitment for well over 40 years!

They have travelled the pathway of dedicated clerical service, with its highs and lows.  And yet they too feel stigmatised by the actions of priest perpetrators and are not immune to the innuendo and at times vitriol that swirls around the public discourse.

It speaks volumes for the degree of public outrage that even though the number of priests and religious that have abused children is low in relative terms, the very fact that there were clerical abusers completely undermines the concept of the priesthood for many people. And while many of the victims and survivors of the abuse have suffered lifetimes of torment today’s priests and religious bear, for the most part in silence, the collateral damage.

Even though it was not raised at this meeting the damage to priests and religious goes as far as for some to be wrongfully accused or to become the subject of mistaken identity.

This is an aspect of the scandal that has had little attention but it is a reality, especially when damaged memories and faulty recall are involved. In the current climate it is a reality that is being lived silently, albeit not without its own suffering.

I presume that the royal commissioners have likewise come across similar instances throughout the course of their inquiry. We all need to register the scope of the damage that abuse and its cover up has rendered on our community.

Beyond that though being in such a ‘priestly’ environment I was struck by its overt lack of clericalism. There was no sense of authoritative rule, or even a ‘pecking order’ of importance. I didn’t feel anything but a sense of inclusiveness and welcome for myself and for those within the fraternity. In other words, they were a community where collaboration and respect rules.

Often critics of the Church’s culture highlight clericalism as being one of the factors that perpetuated the abuse scandal. They pinpoint the abuse of power by some in positions of responsibility, their propensity to safeguard the interests of the ‘system’ before the rights of those who work and live in it and the willingness to choose their personal advancement rather than challenge any misguided sense of loyalty to the Church, religious congregation or diocese.

In short, it is the very antithesis of a priestly and religious vocation and gospel values.

If nothing else the sex abuse scandal has raised the awareness of the perils of clericalism, the defensiveness for the Church and the exclusive nature of decision making within clerical environments.

A conversation around all this has already been underway in the Church and it holds the hope of producing more transparent and accountable procedures, better collaboration and far more effective engagement with the laity in the daily workings of the institutional Church.

As I have mentioned before, the Royal Commission is now very much in its ‘wrap up’ phase. It is increasingly exploring why institutions handled the scandal the way they did. Understanding the complexities of historical sex abuse cases is central to that investigation.

 A Church for our time
30 June 2016

 This past week I accepted invitations to speak at Spirituality in the Pub in Bendigo, CatholicCare Melbourne’s staff forum, and a parish community meeting in Mount Gambier in South Australia.

Yet again the depth of pain ordinary Catholics feel about the clerical sex abuse scandal was plainly evident.

It doesn't matter whether the event is organised from within the Church or from beyond, whether I am talking to parishioners, staff or the broader community, it is always the same reaction. A collective sense of shame and often anger.

Even though we are now well over three years into the life of the Royal Commission, facing the fact that past Church leaders mishandled, covered up and blatantly placed the interests of the institution before those of children and justice itself still renders most of us gobsmacked.

That said, there is an extraordinary willingness among many who attend these events to entertain hope for the Church. Whilst most people realise that although the Church of today did not perpetrate the crimes of the past, there is a general acknowledgement that only a collective response from the Church community will enable proper atonement for the abuse history.

This starts with holding all of us to account for revealing the truth and to justly redress the pain of those who have been abused. It also involves complying with the most stringent of standards to ensure that Catholic organisations, settings and events are safe for everyone.

On a deeper level it involves an awareness of the ways our culture promotes a form of clericalism, where many of those in positions of responsibility did and can use their positions in authoritative and domineering ways rather than as instruments for service and creativity.

It also includes a willingness to promote participation of lay people at all levels of decision making in the Church. The gifts and talents we all bring need to be acknowledged, utilised and respected. Gone are the days where the residue of medieval structures and processes can cut the mustard in modern Australia.

Significantly this mirrors the position of the Pope who recognises change is coming, that clericalism must be a thing of the past, that our leaders must be more accountable and transparent and that the talents of us all, but particularly women, must play a much greater part in the decisions that affect us all.

These sorts of comments, along with many others, are not coming from disengaged and disaffected Catholics. They consistently can be heard from loyal and practicing Catholics hell-bent on being part of the Church of the future.

They love their Church but want it to move into the 21^st century. Their prayer is becoming almost an anthem - let's face the truth and become what we are meant to be. 

Amen to that!

CRA National Assembly, hope for the future
23 June 2016

This week I had the honour once again of addressing Catholic Religious Australia’s annual national assembly. This is a meeting of Australia's leaders of religious institutes, congregations and societies. There are 189 in all.

CRA's leadership has been at the forefront with the Catholic bishops in overseeing the work of our Council.  Their unwavering support has been vital to the work of the Council.

Many of the religious leaders have been part of the seismic changes the Church has put in place over the last 20 years to better address child sexual abuse cases. The establishment of Towards Healing, the Encompass treatment program and the Integrity in Ministry protocol have all been driven by religious leaders determined to change the culture within the Church and its organisations.

It has been an essential, if very difficult path.

As I have indicated in previous blogs it is this story of reform and innovation that now needs greater attention.

The miserable history of child sexual abuse in the Church is now almost common knowledge. The failures to report abusers, the institutional defensiveness and the gross abuse of institutional power are plain for all to see.

But what is crucial to understand is that changes were introduced by Church leaders. These changes have even been replicated in other countries and despite the fact that they have worked well most of the time, the religious leaders have adopted a continuous improvement approach and introduced reforms across the years.

What I found so encouraging at the CRA conference was the openness and resolve by participants to embrace more change. They recognise the need for even more rigorous professional standards and formation.

They are working on new guidelines for support and supervision of people living vowed religious life. They are establishing best practice church structures for vital ministries in health, education and social services. 

As always the leaders of religious congregations are setting new pathways for the Church in general and pointing to new expressions for the works they have championed for so long.

And amongst all this is the ever present challenge of confronting the shame of the abuse perpetrated within the Church.

Even though there has been a Church-based redress scheme for the last 20 years, the leaders are clear that the country needs an independent system of redress so that all victims can access financial and pastoral support.

Time is of the essence. All that is lacking is the political momentum. We have heard the sounds of silence from the Federal Government and a number of states have refused to participate in a national scheme. But there have been some recent hopeful signs from within the bureaucracy that just possibly the serious work is beginning.

With the Federal Election out of the way by July, so too will be any barriers to the establishment of a national scheme. I for one, look forward to working with the Federal Government, relevant departments and interested groups to get this show on the road.

As the rubber hits the road
16 June 2016

It is now some weeks since Pope Francis announced plans to make bishops accountable for grave neglect in the area of child safety. This came on the back of a previous pledge where he proposed a penal tribunal be established for a similar purpose.  The latter has not seen the light of day, probably due to Vatican politics. 

So now we have this new endeavour to instil accountabilities on the performance of bishops in carrying out their responsibilities. If nothing else this shows the Pope is serious about bringing bishops to account.

It also shows how difficult it is to get real change within the Vatican culture. A culture too often driven by clerical protectionism. 

‘And let's be straight, for decades this same culture permeated the handling of clerical child sex abuse here as well. It seems that not only did many clerical officials protect the interests of the institution, their responses either deliberately or by extension, ensured the likelihood of them being held in any way personally responsible would always be very difficult to establish.

As we have seen, the Royal Commission has now heard from many other institutions where corporate self-interest and the preservation of individual careers shaped the handling of abuse cases. This phenomenon does not appear to be specific to any institution, be it a church or a government agency. 

Little wonder that victims and their advocates want an independent system of redress set up so that all the institutions in which sex abuse has occurred are held to account, regardless of their reputation or who was involved. 

I think this flags a particularly important point.

When the Royal Commission started there was a widespread perception that it was an inquiry into the Catholic Church. Probably the media attention of scandals in the Church fed into that perception. That said, the Church's history certainly warranted such an inquiry and now it is obvious that so many other institutions and government agencies did as well.

And this is the rub.

The scandal of the sexual abuse of children has been revealed across institutions of all types, sizes and make up. This isn't church spin; it is a clear unequivocal fact demonstrated with monotonous regularity over the past three and half years as secular and government organisations have come before the Royal Commission.

What is it about institutional culture and the corporate mentality that so consistently, regardless of the setting, sought to advance the interests of the organisation against those of victims?

Even more troubling is why is it that when institutions that had a clearly articulated corporate mission, based on agreed values and attitudes such as respect and honesty, did they act in a way that made a mockery of their stated ethos and purpose?

These are troubling questions and should be exercising anyone in a position of authority and responsibility in these institutions. I know that they are the focus of attention for our Church leaders and Council at present. They are certainly on the Royal Commissioners' agenda as they begin to wrap up their public hearings program over the next half year.

We all need answers to these questions because like so many other Catholics, having to face the shame of my Church's miserable history of hypocrisy cries out for some straight talking and serious navel gazing.

Redress for abuse victims looks set for the bottom drawer this election
7 June 2016

With less than four weeks until polling day the heavy slumber of the electorate is showing signs of lifting.

Opinion polls continue to signal a close result. Nothing new there really. The polls always tighten as election dates close in.

Hip pocket issues begin to surface and politicians expend enormous emotional energy attempting to convince us that they are engaged, down to earth and responsive. Again, nothing new there.

And that’s the point. Disengagement is the problem. People stop listening because they are not listened to. The current craft of narrative manipulation that besets political strategists has become self-defeating. Political parties have sought to tell the community what it needs and when it needs it.

Focus group polling is now the basis of political messaging. Engaging local community concerns has been relegated to a ‘West Wing’ type robo call data file! No wonder ordinary voters figure that they will think about their ballot box duty when they have to and not much before that!

The tragedy is that the deeper and bigger issues, particularly of justice and the restoration of fairness, simply don’t play in this type of election. All the strategies are pitched at individualism, not community responsibility. Notions of personal sacrifice for a greater good are hard to even get on the agenda, let alone sell.

The classic case in point is the concept of national redress for victims of child abuse. I am convinced that this is instinctively popular with most Australians. It resonates with our sense of fair play. It is totally consistent with our desire to help the underdog. In other words it is part of the DNA of our national ethos. And yet where is the political momentum to deliver it?

Justice McClellan deliberately fast tracked his Commission’s recommendations on redress so that governments could act. There is no need to wait for any more detailed considerations from the Commission.

Yet since September last year the Commonwealth Government has been at best confused about what to do and at worst, deliberately in go slow mode! Their attempts to develop a system of redress, even shape a decent discussion seem limp and half-hearted. Feigned rhetoric about the needs of victims falls flat. Little wonder people lose faith in the system.

Along with many others I would be astounded if the issue of national redress for victims gets any decent coverage in this next month. It is almost as if the issue is an inconvenience.

Sadly, this is a typical experience for people who have lived a life where they have struggled to be believed, struggled further to be treated justly and struggle still, to be recognised and appropriately compensated.

A sensible discussion about what's next
1 June 2016

The more I reflect on where we are on this Royal Commission journey the more I realise what a trap living in the past can be.

Let’s face it, the scandal of child abuse in institutions has been a revelation to the community, a shock for many and a massive ‘wake-up call’ for most of us.

The Catholic Church has been a major contributor to institutional child abuse, but the fact that it has occurred across so many other church organisations, private and voluntary bodies and extensively within government- run and sponsored services has been an eye opener. People are increasingly acknowledging that ‘it has been everywhere, not just with the Catholics.’

It gives me absolutely no comfort at all to see the unexpected extent of the abuse and the damage done to so many people.

But there’s a danger in taking a simplistic view of the scandal.

Firstly, much of what has been presented in the Royal Commission’s case studies details past atrocities – sometimes from well over 30 years ago.  Memories are vague, key players are dead and often the actual cases have already been the subject of other inquiries. The past becomes the present as we once again forensically examine and explain what has happened.

Secondly, there can be the tendency to see the past in a bubble. That is, we can look at the horrors and forget that for many institutions there have been massive learnings, changes and improvements. I acknowledge that this is not always the case but it seems that for most it can fairly be said that ‘the times have changed’ and with it the handling of child sexual abuse.

Thirdly, those who are now in positions of responsibility are challenged to deal justly with the past and at the same time instill confidence about the present. If we only view the issue of child protection through a historical lens, there’s a risk that people in leadership positions are seen as part of the problem, rather part of the solution.

Without people committing to a better system of safeguarding and without us acknowledging that best practice actually is happening through the creative endeavours of administrators and leaders today, it will be difficult for communities to heal and to look to a better future.

At this point in the Royal Commission’s progress, I think it is important to acknowledge that change has already begun and that progressive policies like zero tolerance, continuous improvement, benchmarked training and rigorous personnel screening which are now the norm have been in place for some time.

However, none of this must fall prey to the other trap of the past. That is, to say it didn’t happen!

Many victims of childhood sex abuse live with the past every day. Many are still waiting for justice. And we are all holding out hope that the Royal Commission’s recommendations will be taken seriously by governments.

As a community we have been bearing witness to the scandal as Justice McClellan hoped. In this next phase we will see how the Catholic Church and others instigated reforms and how these institutions continually adopt better practices. More than anything right now, we need a sensible discussion about what can work for the future. 

The bad, the good, and the future
26 May 2016

As I said last week it is clear that the Royal Commission has shifted its attention to the second phase of its brief. 

Identifying the best practice in prevention and management of child sex abuse is undoubtedly of vital importance and will be central to the Commission’s recommendations.

So far the Commission’s public hearings have highlighted the failures of institutions and there has been little concentration on what institutions have put in place over the years as they came to terms with the horror of this scandal.

Without wanting to minimise the past failures of the Church I do think it is now an appropriate time to draw attention to the significant work that has gone into prevention, education and victim focused pastoral care within the Catholic Church.

As I have previously stated, the Towards Healing and Melbourne Response programs have worked well for some people and not for others. They have always been ‘works in progress’. At least they have been in place now for well over twenty years and have offered victims a pathway designed to help achieve a level of restorative justice.

So many other institutions simply didn’t have any redress or reparation programs in place, and still don’t.

The Church leadership has given every indication that it will continue to pursue best practice in this area and we are engaged with the Commission wherever possible to explore such avenues.

It is interesting to step back and ask why it is that the Catholic Church actively put in place reparation schemes when so many other institutions didn’t. I expect that for most institutions their legal advice was to let the courts deal with the issue.

Of course that was a fairly ‘safe’ course to adopt as most cases of child sexual abuse had very little chance of success in the courts. Either the perpetrators were dead, the limitation period had been exceeded or there were no witnesses to corroborate the victim’s story. If the victim was lucky maybe an out of court settlement would occur. However, the legal might of the institution could easily prevail.

Hardly a sympathetic, let alone compassionate response.

For many years Church leaders and officials panicked and sought to safeguard the reputation of the Church and adopt legalistic approaches to child abuse cases. By the late 1980s the true ethos of the Church finally began to emerge and we began to see more of a pastoral response to victims. 

In other words, the essence of the Church came to the fore and began to shape a response very different from the knee jerk legalistic approach that was previously in place. This meant that resources, both financial and human, had to be deployed to make a redress and reparation complaints handling system a reality. It meant that institutional apologies, counselling and material support needed to be available. It meant the Church had to humbly accept its history and its failures.

Facing the shame of the hypocrisy and the humiliation that the scandal has caused were also important public testaments that Church leaders have made. At that time, unlike other institutions at least the Catholic Church showed that it was and has been prepared to shift its approach, learn from grave mistakes and face up to its failures.

I think this more than anything has been the difference in the history of the Church’s approach to child sex abuse compared to other institutions. As the saying goes, ‘we are not there yet’ but the embrace of best practice over these last twenty years and the willingness to innovate and improve can only make things better.

So, what's next?
19 May 2016

After nearly three-and-a-half years into the Royal Commission’s inquiry the overriding narrative of how institutions dealt with the sexual abuse of children is fairly obvious.

Whether they were religious settings or not, the institutions placed their interests before those of the victims. Even worse, the officials often didn’t believe the victims and sought evidence to further disprove their claims.

Institutions kept the allegations from the police and other authorities. Where reparation was made available it was usually inadequate, haphazard and a drawn out affair.

In sum, the might of institutions far outweighed the needs, rights and dignity of their victims.

This miserable tale has been repeated time after time through the Royal Commission’s public case studies. It is a scorching historical account.

That said, there is another story that has slowly emerged in the last twenty years – a story of restorative justice.

Putting it bluntly, once the Catholic bishops and religious leaders made a serious commitment to approach the child abuse scandal in a pastoral, rather than a defensive way, the needs of victims and the demands for restorative justice began to shape official complaints handling protocols and reparation schemes.

Of course for too many people this was a slow train coming. For others they still fell foul to poorly applied protocols and systems. But at least on an objective basis the development of Towards Healing and the Melbourne Response were seismic shifts in the Church’s approach to victims.

Now the Royal Commission has distributed Issues Paper 11 calling for community input into various elements of the Catholic Church’s life and culture. This clearly is a preliminary information collecting exercise prior to the scheduled final summary hearing for the Catholic Church in February next year.

I think this indicates that the Commission is now very much in its second major phase of this inquiry. That is, beginning to identify the administrative areas that require remediation and realignment with best practice.

In many ways this is integral to the lasting legacy of the Commission’s work. What legislative and administrative requirements, safeguards, monitoring and commitments to continuous improvement need to be present in every organisation which involves children and services to children.

Of course there will be particular measures that the Catholic Church has and will put in place due to its arrangements, personnel and services. Telling that story will be important.

Redress is an election issue
11 May 2016

The starter gun had barely fired and the issue of a national redress scheme for victims of institutional child abuse was on the hustings! This time it came courtesy of The Greens! Senator Rachel Siewert and her colleagues have indicated that they will push both Labor and the Coalition to deliver a national scheme along the lines first proposed by the Royal Commission.

This is consistent with what we have called for and it is certainly what victims groups prefer. A system where redress is available for victims regardless of where or when they were abused. A system that places the onus for payment on the institution responsible, including government agencies. A system that can be independently administered where victims have their redress determined by a panel that has no connection with the institution responsible.

So far the momentum for a national scheme, even a nationally consistent series of schemes, has been very ad hoc. We know that states like Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland are working towards the creation of redress schemes. They are sending signals that a national approach is also their preference.

But the kicker to this deal is the Commonwealth Government. So far only the pure optimist would be placing their hopes in the resolve and determination of the Commonwealth to get behind a serious and effective national scheme.

All the indications are that the Commonwealth wants to slip out from under any responsibility to deliver redress for victims, even though it was the Commonwealth government that initiated, extended and funded the current Royal Commission. A commission that easily has become the most expensive in the history of their kind in Australia. A commission whose very first and arguably most important recommendation was calling for a national redress system administered by the Commonwealth government. The irony of the situation we now face is breath taking! 

Does this mean that all the Commission's recommendations face the same fate? Does this reveal the scant regard the Commonwealth intends to take to the work of this Commission because its findings are too difficult or too close for comfort? Or does this show that when all is said and done, the might of governments and the clout of institutions once again will relegate the voices of those who have suffered, and still suffer, to the shadows of silence and disregard!

Private sessions come to an end, and greater demand for national redress
5 May 2016

Late last week the Royal Commission announced it would be closing registrations for private sessions on 30 September 2016.

This is a significant event and the first very clear public announcement indicating that the Royal Commission is now entering into the final phases of its life.

The private sessions have played an integral part in the Commission’s work.

They have provided survivors with the opportunity to share their story directly with a Commissioner in a private, safe setting with both their own and the Commission’s support on hand.

In a statement from the Commission last week Peter McClellan said ‘the rate at which people come to the Commission seeking a private session shows no present sign of diminishing. It has averaged 37 per week over the past 12 months.’

‘If the present demand for private sessions continues throughout the life of the Commission, unless we close off applications well before we complete our final report, many people who may seek a private session will be disappointed.’

What has become clear from the Commission’s reports and comments from Peter McClellan is that information gathered from survivors in the private sessions has proved critical to the Commission’s investigations and, to a large extent, has influenced which institutions would be the subject of public hearings.

In the Commission’s interim report in 2014 the statistics drawn from the private hearings showed one in three people coming to tell their story to the Commission had been abused in a Catholic institution.

This one in three figure roughly represents the proportion of public hearings that have focused on the Catholic Church.

But more significantly than just pointing to where the Commission should investigate, the private sessions have played a very real part for many survivors in their personal journey of recovery.

This month the Commission heard its 5,000^th private session nearly three years to the day since it heard its first in May 2013.

Following the announcement that private session registration would soon stop the Blue Knot Foundation issued a media release calling on the Federal Government to commit to a national redress scheme before the election.

Blue Knot Foundation President, Cathy Kezelman, said action was now needed to reassure survivors who had told their story ‘that their courage will be a catalyst for systemic changes to optimise the safety of our children in institutions in the future’.

‘The reassurance would be best achieved through a national redress scheme, which can deliver justice through compensation, a direct personal response from institutions and accessible and equitable counselling and psychological care,’ Dr Kezelman said.

Earlier this year we joined with the Blue Knot Foundation, CLAN and the Australian Council of Social Services calling on the Federal Government to act on the Commission’s redress recommendations and back a national, independent redress scheme for abuse survivors.

While the Labor opposition has said it would bring in a national scheme if it is returned to power the Turnbull government has rejected the Commission’s recommendation opting instead for a scheme that will see states and territories run separate but similar schemes.

Other than some of the state governments it is very hard to find anyone who supports this approach. What the survivors clearly want and what most institutions are also calling for is a national scheme.

There is still plenty of time for the Federal Government to demonstrate its support for the Commission and for survivors, by backing a scheme which will deliver fair, fast and consistent redress regardless of where or when a child was abused.

Change is taking place
29 April 2016

This week the Royal Commission finalised hearing evidence into its public hearing about the way in which the Archdiocese of Melbourne responded to allegations of child sexual abuse while earlier this month the Commission also finalised hearing evidence into the Ballarat case study.

Together these two hearings have run over more than 12 months and have attracted a huge amount of media coverage and commentary from all parts of the community.

The behavior of many priests and religious in Ballarat and in Doveton in Melbourne was truly appalling and the two case studies have highlighted how poorly church leaders responded the victims.

It now looks like there may only be one or two more public hearings involving the Catholic Church before the Commission’s final public hearing early next year which will again focus on ‘why’ so much child sexual abuse took place in Catholic Church institutions.

With the end of these last two hearings, as protracted and difficult as they have been, there might now be some space to start to talk about what the church has done over the past 20 years to make children safer in our schools, dioceses, parishes and homes.

It might now also be time to start talking about what different diocese and orders have done since the Commission started its work just under three and a half years ago – and there has been plenty.

More and more dioceses and congregations are engaging specialised child protection staff reporting directly to bishops and congregation leaders. Child protection policies are being overhauled and reporting and compliance requirements strengthened.

Congregations are putting in place new guidelines for dealing with survivors wanting to take claims to Court and many are opening up past settlements for reconsideration.

The albatross that is colloquially known as the Ellis defense is starting to become a thing of the past with dioceses and congregations on the record saying they will help identify a proper defendant in civil claims of child sexual abuse.

Many parishes are actively talking about how they can be involved in supporting child sex abuse survivors locally and what can be done within a parish to help.

And we are moving closer to setting up an independent church body to set, oversee and publically report on standards of child and vulnerable adult protections across the whole church in Australia.

The big challenge for us now is to find the language and the way in which we can communicate the very significant changes that have taken place without being seen to be trying to deflect from the crimes and failures of the past.

It will be a very long time before many in the community will be able to look at our church and say that it is now a different place but the fact is – much has changed and not just since the Commission started its work.

From the ground up we will need to start talking about these changes and what they mean for abuse survivors, children currently in our institutions and for the broader Catholic community.

National approach to police reporting urgently required
22 April 2016

This week the Royal Commission held a public roundtable dealing with the contentious issue of the reporting of allegations of child sexual abuse to the police.

According to media reports, since 2009 non-government organisations across NSW have made some 1,500 ‘blind reports’ to NSW Police. A blind report is a report to police in which all the information received about the allegation is provided other than the name of the person making the allegation.

This generally happens because the victim or the person making the claim doesn’t want the police to know who they are.

There are many reasons for this, ranging from the victim wanting to remain anonymous, they haven’t told their family and friends about the abuse, they don’t want a police investigation to reveal their identity.

In many cases, particularly when the perpetrator is dead, the only action the survivor wants is for the responsible church authority to be aware of what happened, to apologise, and to ensure the abuse they suffered can’t happen again.

While this might seem reasonable from the perspective of the survivor it poses real problems for police if they want to investigate the allegation and could result in a perpetrator continuing to abuse children.

As a result of the clear problems ‘blind reporting’ creates congregations and dioceses across NSW have stopped the practice and now provide all information to the police including the victim’s name, regardless of their wish to remain anonymous.

And in the case of the NSW Professional Standards Office, they are going back over all their historic ‘blind reports’ to provide the name of the survivor.

Last year a NSW Police Integrity Commission report recommended that the practice of ‘blind reporting’ should be reviewed. While many dioceses including Parramatta, Wollongong, Broken Bay and Maitland-Newcastle had already stopped blind reporting, this report brought the practice to a stop in the Professional Standards Office in NSW.

Apart from the problems ‘blind reporting’ clearly created, the solution has to be more widespread than just in NSW.

In a submission from the Truth Justice and Healing Council in August last year to the Royal Commission’s issues paper on police reporting we made a recommendation that there should be nationally consistent criminal law provision in relation to reporting child sexual abuse crimes.

The submission proposed a requirement that a person who has information leading the person to form a reasonable belief that a sexual offence has been committed against a child to disclose that information to the police unless the person has a reasonable excuse for not doing so.

This could include that the person believes the information has already been the subject of reporting under mandatory reporting laws.

This sort of national approach would ensure everyone fully understands what is required when they learn of an abuse allegation and what information needs to be passed on to the police.

In so many different issues relating to child sexual abuse many of the solutions are hamstrung by the seeming unwillingness of states to come together and produce nationally consistent laws.

We see the same problem in relation to working with children checks, out of home care regulations, redress of abuse survivors and more.

The time is well and truly passed when state government sensibilities over their own laws should be allowed to stand in the way of the protection of children.

The Royal Commission in all its reports inevitably recommends nationally consistent laws. State and Federal Governments need to get on board. 

Perspective from UK member of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors
13 April 2016

This week I met up with Baroness Sheila Hollins from the UK. She is a member of the House of Lords and has been appointed to Pope Francis' Commission for the Protection of Minors. She is a very accomplished and eminent person, former president of the Royal College of Psychiatrists and part of the Vatican team sent to Ireland to inquire into the Diocese of Armagh.

Baroness Hollins speaks gently and frankly about the enormous task facing the global Catholic Church to address child abuse and to prevent it happening again. She acknowledges that some, like Pope Francis "get it ", and others don't.

Ever the realist she knows that real change takes shifts in culture as well as practice. For the Church, that means understanding the impacts of clericalism and the abuse of power. It means having a deep appreciation of how entrenched, defensive institutional attitudes pervade across the life of the Church. It means being explicit about how victims and survivors are placed first in every consideration.

Practical steps are required to bring compliance with safe guarding up to best practice. This is at the heart of the Royal Commission's agenda. It is also deeply sought after by victims who repeatedly ask that every measure is taken to prevent the abuse ever happening again.

Our Council has recommended a new oversight regime be instigated in the Church to such an end. Ideally governments would set up structures for all institutions that provide services for children. But governments are slow to move. Just look at how long they are taking to get their collective act together on national redress!

The Church needs to move now and hopefully governments will catch up.

Just as Baroness Hollins, and our Australian appointee to the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, Kath McCormack, toil with great purpose to provide the value-added advice the Holy Father desperately needs, our Council continues to prepare for a comprehensive analysis of the cultural and other factors that led to the emergence and management of the sex abuse scandal.

This is essential and urgent work.

Our Church must look at itself and honestly appraise where change is needed. To do otherwise will let everyone down.

Royal Commission wrap-up hearing on Catholic Church requires openness, not defensiveness
Francis Sullivan 6 April 2016

The Royal Commission has indicated that it intends to hold a final hearing on the Catholic Church in early 2017, four years after the Commission’s work began. This hearing will be designed to examine the ‘why’ question.

Although child sexual abuse has occurred in many institutions apart from the Catholic Church, it falls to the Commission to examine whether there were and are any distinctive characteristics or features of the Church environment that caused children to be abused. Hard as it is to acknowledge, the Catholic Church is the single largest institutional setting in which children have been abused.

I know that this has a contextual perspective, the Catholic Church did run most of the schools, orphanages and boarding houses across the 1950s, 60s and 70s. However, context is never an excuse. It is also not enough of an answer when most experts agree that institutional culture is a vital component when explaining institutional behaviour.

At this stage of the Royal Commission’s process it is tempting to adopt a defensive, reactionary stance.

There have already been 14 public hearings focused on the Church. Some people are asking what more needs to be revealed before it is plain what actually happened. Fair enough, but each hearing has produced new insights into the institutional responses by the Church.

They have also revealed those elements of our culture that promote secrecy, concealment and complicity. They have demonstrated that clericalism and careerism prevailed when justice and compassion were needed.

They made it obvious that decision-making was not undertaken responsibly, in accountable and transparent ways.

And most of all they showed that the instinctive reaction to defend the Church, to prevent scandal and to uphold institutional reputation drove the management of child sex abuse cases and relegated the needs of victims below those of the Church. 

These are damning results. They are grounded in the culture and systems of our Church. They expose a gross misuse of powers and structures. They cry out for reform.

Maladministration and clericalism, along with abuse of power and privilege ensured that the sex abuse scandal was concealed for so long.

My hunch is that this is exactly where Justice McClellan and his commissioners will be seeking answers.

They are not aiming to change Church teachings in the areas of faith and morals. It would be pointless attempting to change the nature of the Church as understood by people of faith.

So too would it be fruitless to insist on changes that by their very nature undermine the collective faith teachings of the Church. 

But I hope that they are going to run a rigorous eye over administrative policies, procedures and practices that led to the abuse, concealed the facts, protected perpetrators and miserably failed victims.

I for one will do everything possible to assist them.

Time for Governments to act on redress for child sexual abuse survivors
Francis Sullivan March 31, 2016

Tomorrow government leaders from across the country will meet to discuss many important issues dealing with great matters of state – tax, education, health and the like.

They will fly into Canberra with caravans of advisors and bureaucrats to take part in the imposingly named, Council of Australian Governments meeting. The Prime Minister will be there as will most, if not all state premiers.

But what appears to be off the COAG agenda is any discussion about a national redress scheme for the survivors of child sexual abuse.

For more than three and a half years terrible stories of abuse have filled newspapers and radio and TV bulletins.

What we have heard at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has been horrifying.

Young children brutally abused by the very people who should have been protecting them: priests and teachers, welfare workers and dance instructors, sports coaches and house parents.

Opportunities squashed, lives lost, families devastated. 

The Catholic and other churches, state police, prosecutors and community service departments, sports and community organisations have all come under the intense scrutiny of the Commission.

There appear to be very few institutions which have dealt with children over the past half century in which abuse of one kind or another hasn’t taken place. It is a tragedy and betrayal that continues to cripple so many survivors so many years after the horrors took place.

When the Commission was announced at the end of 2012 it had the full support of politicians of all persuasions across the country.

Last year the Commission released a report into how, as a community, we can go about the long overdue business of providing fair and compassionate redress for child sexual abuse survivors.

The proposal would see the Commonwealth establish and then run a scheme in which abuse survivors can have a claim assessed and a redress payment independently determined. This payment would then be made by the organisation which ran the institution in which the abuse took place.

The scheme would, for the first time, provide consistent redress across the country for survivors regardless of where or when they were abused or who abused them.

Importantly it will be funded by the institutions themselves, not by the tax payer except when the abuse happened in a government home, mission or other state or federally operated facility.

Not one cent of taxpayer money will be spent on covering abuse in Catholic institutions.

The Commission’s redress proposal has received across-the-board support from most, if not all survivor groups, the Catholic Church and many other institutions with a history of child sexual abuse.

The rubber has now hit the road for our political leaders.

The only things holding back setting up what appears to be an eminently sensible proposal is the indecision of the federal government and unwillingness of some states.

Three and a half years ago, when the Commission first started, politicians from all persuasions were quick to show their support. It now seems extraordinary that one of the Commission’s key recommendations is being effectively watered down to a scheme that does not meet the expectations of the Commission or survivors.

It’s not too late for this important issue to become part of the COAG agenda and it is certainly not too late for preliminary funding to be made available in the upcoming federal budget.

If our political leaders do not start to seriously discuss national redress for child sexual abuse survivors it’s difficult to draw any conclusion other than that they don’t really care.

While I hope this is wrong, so far there has been little evidence for optimism.

This blog appeared as an opinion piece in the Daily Telegraph on 31 March 2016.

United call for national CSA redress, Lateline and Easter
Francis Sullivan21 March 2016

Last week, for the first time, the peak child abuse survivors groups and the Catholic Church, under the banner of the Truth Justice and Healing Council, came together as one voice to call on governments across the nation to get on with national redress.

The collective, made up of Adults Surviving Child Abuse, Care Leavers Australasia Network, Australian Council of Social Service, People with Disability Australia and the TJHC called on the Federal Government to announce its concrete commitment to a National Redress Scheme for survivors of institutional childhood sexual abuse.

A media statement, which included logos of all five organisations, made it clear the diverse group is undivided in their support for a national scheme, as recommended by the Royal Commission.

Dr Cathy Kezelman President of ASCA called on all governments to work with institutions to deliver real justice and healing to Australian survivors as a matter of absolute priority.

Leonie Sheedy, from CLAN said the last thing Care Leavers need is another unfair system which does not address their chronically unmet needs.

As I have said many times Australia needs an independent national redress scheme so that regardless of where or when a survivor was abused they have access to consistent, compassionate and generous redress.

Cassandra Goldie from ACOSS said the correct action on this important issue can’t be delayed any longer.

The voice from the survivor groups and the Church couldn’t be louder.

Together we are asking governments to do the right thing, stick by their commitments to abuse survivors and get on with the job of delivering a fair and reasonable national redress not a half-baked, state-based approach that will, over a few years, devolve into the very mess we currently have.

Lateline last week ran a story calling on all CSA files in the Melbourne Archdiocese and the Vatican to be effectively dumped at the doors of the Royal Commission and made available to the police.

The Church has provided all documents to the Royal Commission at their request. The Royal Commission has not asked for the documents referred to in the Lateline report.

Neither the police nor the Commission have issue with not having these files. The Commission has said Catholic Church authorities have responded to all Royal Commission requests for documents including those relating to their interactions with the Vatican.

Victoria Police said it will await the findings and any recommendations of the Royal Commission.

On a different note, I’d just like to acknowledge this Easter season. It’s a time of rebirth and renewal in the Christian calendar.

The grace we all pray for is a new way of seeing. An openness to the perspectives of others and the voices of people who have different opinions and beliefs than our own. Many of us are deeply challenged by the revelations coming out of the Royal Commission.

It is my hope that humility and compassion will prevail and that the testimony and suffering of so many people will lead to big changes in this Church of ours.

Cardinal Müller’s revisionist view damages church and denies victims
Francis Sullivan, 15 March 2016

Last week one of the most senior Cardinals in the Vatican and Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Cardinal Gerhard Müller made comments in an interview with one of Germany’s major dailies that the clerical perpetrators of child sexual abuse must take the responsibility for their crimes and not ‘innocent men’ who were close to them professionally.

This is something I thought I would never hear again, that old and tired and deceitful idea that clerical child sexual abuse was the fault of a ‘few bad apples’ and that there is no requirement on the Church as a whole to share in the blame and as a consequence take responsibility for the devastating results.

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith is the final tribunal for priestly sexual abuse cases – it is where, within Church structures, abusive priests are judged and decisions made about their future.

The Congregation is an extremely important part of the Vatican, particularly at a time when abuse survivors and the community are weighing up every word from every Church leader, be they a parish priest or the Pope, to see if they really ‘do get it’.

When the leader of this Congregation seems to have made a judgment that the responsibility for decades of child sexual abuse should rest solely with the perpetrators then we have a big problem.

What has now become clear, and what seems to be broadly accepted by many, if not most people both in and outside the Church, is that a cultural failing within the Church allowed for the cover up of crimes and monsters dressed as priests to be moved from one parish to another, from one state to another and sometimes from one country to another.

In many cases when offending priests were moved, someone in the church hierarchy knew they were abusing kids and yet they allowed the move to take place, with the result that the offending priest continued to prey on and hurt children.

The senior leaders who made these decisions were not child abusers, but let’s be clear, their decisions led directly to children continuing to be abused in our Church.

There are no ifs or buts – this has been demonstratively proven.  This is a tragedy that the entire Church needs to acknowledge and address.

This isn’t about a few bad apples, it is about collusion and cover up, it’s about reputation before transparency, it’s about abandoning the very bedrock of Christ’s teaching to protect an institution.

If we allow the old defensive thinking that minimises and blame-shifts to reassert itself then the Church and the survivors of clerical sexual abuse will continue to be mired in this crisis for decades to come.

What has driven the response to the evidence from Rome?
Francis Sullivan, 4 March 2016

This week has been a dreadful time for the Catholic Church in Australia.

The Royal Commission finished hearing evidence into the Melbourne Archdiocese and all but finished with the Ballarat Dioceses including the Christian Brothers. The hearings culminated with a marathon four-day evidence session from Cardinal Pell via videolink from Rome. By any measure it was a gruelling experience for all.

The interest, commentary and temperature around this past four days has never been greater – both here and internationally.

So what has driven this?

Firstly, Ballarat and the parts of Melbourne that were investigated by the Commission are at the very epicentre of child sexual abuse within the Church in Australia. More crimes and cover-ups are associated with these two places over more years than anywhere else in Australia.

Secondly, the administrations of Archbishop Little in Melbourne and Bishop Mulkearns in Ballart clearly failed in dealing with two of the Church’s most high profile and appalling offenders – Peter Searson in Doveton and Gerald Ridsdale in Ballarat. This opened the door to perhaps hundreds of children being abused and, in many cases, damaged for life.

Thirdly, the high profile and extremely effective survivors group which has taken its campaign for justice to the gates of the Vatican. They have attended the hearings in Rome respectfully and did not impact on the Cardinal’s evidence. But at the same time they have used the world’s media to send a very clear message – justice is still a long way off and much more needs to be done.

Lastly, the marathon appearance of Cardinal Pell, the third most senior cleric in the Vatican and variously a priest and auxiliary bishop during the twenty or so years some of Australia’s worst child sex abusers were offending in regions where he worked and lived.

Together these factors have come together to create a perfect storm.

Sitting in the hearing room hearing for both last week’s evidence and the evidence from Cardinal Pell has been difficult, difficult for survivors, difficult for Catholics and I assume difficult for the lawyers and the Commission itself.

I have come out of the hearing angry at the appalling behaviour of too many senior church leaders, saddened to hear again about the abuse suffered by so many little children at the hands of those dressed as priests and brothers.

What becomes clearer and clearer every time we sit through a hearing and every time we hear the horrendous stories of abuse is the need for an independent redress scheme, the need for uniform child protection laws across the country, new approaches to the way in which survivors can access the courts and more rigorous child protection standards for all institutions including the Catholic Church.

There is little we can do about the abuse of the past other than ensure everything has been revealed and the survivors are treated fairly with respect and dignity.

What we can and must do is continue to work as hard as possible to ensure every child in a Catholic school, parish, home, welfare organisation, hospital or other facility is safe. And that goes beyond the very minimum child protection standards but must include that they are loved, are cared for and are valued.

Ballarat hearing, Cardinal Pell evidence
Francis Sullivan, 23 February 2016

It’s been quite a week.

Victoria’s Ballarat Bishop Paul Bird put himself forward as a defendant in historical sex abuse cases. Bishop Bird, along with a number of other senior Church leaders including Archbishop Fisher in Sydney and Archbishop Coleridge in Brisbane, have now publically endorsed the new policy which requires a Church organisation facing a civil claim of child sexual abuse to help identify an entity to sue.

This is solid support for the measure signed off by Church leaders last year. While the leaders are not required by law to provide the entity to sue, it takes strong moral leaders to show the way. Victims groups have welcomed the decision as a shining light.

And the Royal Commission is in Ballarat this week to hear the third part of Case Study 28. This time it’s looking at allegations of child sex abuse by clergy and religious focusing on the Christian Brothers. Bishop Ronald Mulkearns, who is terminally ill will also give evidence via video.

Next week, Cardinal George Pell will provide evidence for Case Studies 28 and 35, via video from Rome, on his doctor’s advice.

Not surprisingly, the Cardinal’s inability to attend in person has unleashed a visceral response from many in the community.

Survivors and their supporters are understandably angry that they will not get their day in court with the Cardinal.

Many have described the anguish they felt having to give evidence in front of the Commissioners and before a public gallery. They expected the Cardinal to answer questions under similar circumstances.

For many, the Cardinal’s evidence is very significant, not just because of his role in the Diocese of Ballarat and the Archdiocese of Melbourne, but in his current capacity as the most senior Catholic in Australia and the third ranking Vatican official in the world.

A crowd funding effort has raised over $200,000 to enable 15 or more survivors to travel to Rome to attend the Cardinal’s evidence in person. This is a great measure of solidarity from the Australian community.

And proceeds from comedian, Tim Minchin’s controversial song, which called on the Cardinal to return home to give evidence, also contributed to that fund.

The airwaves have been alive with all of this. There have been all sorts of requests and suggestions, accusations and generalisations. It’s depressing. The Church has clearly lost any lingering credibility with many people in the community.

But what matters at the end of the day is that we get the evidence from the Cardinal, and we get it in an effective way, in a dignified way that befits a royal commission so that the Commissioners can draw this case study to a close. The Cardinal must be afforded procedural fairness, like anybody else.

Some people, particularly some of the victims, gave their evidence way back in the middle of last year.  The lack of closure of this hearing is just adding to the distress.

The Royal Commission is doing a professional job under extraordinary, tense and difficult circumstances. In the face of this heightened atmosphere, and massive public interest, the Royal Commission has the where-with-all to go about its work in a dispassionate and objective way.

And more broadly this week, people are still talking about the film Spotlight. It’s absolutely extraordinary.

It tells you that the way the Catholic Church dealt with child sex abuse is germane to its culture. It’s a culture where the residue of a medieval structures still exists, where power and control determine who says what, and when. Who gets the information and how individuals can be intimidated in the system not to speak up. It’s that culture that in its claustrophobic nature shuts things down and becomes extraordinarily protective of the institution. That’s what Spotlight showed.

And so, the work of the Council continues. We’ve got a long way to go yet.

Rebuilding trust will be a long, hard road
Francis Sullivan - 17 February 2016

The debate around the appearance of Cardinal Pell by video link at the Royal Commission in a week or so continues to rage and I see that a number of survivors from Melbourne and Ballarat are thinking about making the trip to Rome to hear the Cardinal’s evidence.

While I have said previously it would have been preferable for the Cardinal to give his evidence in person to the Commission, as he did during the John Ellis hearing in March 2014, the fact that his health won’t allow this should not be seen in any way as the Church thumbing its nose at the Commission or at survivors.

As far as the Catholic Church in Australia is concerned, we have been cooperating as best we possibly can, at many, many levels, with the Commission. Nothing we have that the Commission has asked for has been withheld and no one the Commission has wanted to speak to has not been available.

We are the single largest institution the Commission has dealt with. We have been the subject of more public hearings into different parts of the Church than any other organisation or institution and well over a third of the private sessions so far have related to the Catholic Church.

And while many will rightfully say this is nothing more than a factor of the breadth of abuse within the Church over many years it does require an enormous amount of work to ensure the Commission has all it wants to be confident everything is on the table.

Since the Commission’s public hearings started in 2013 we have provided hundreds of thousands of documents, statements and other material. And while not wanting to put words into the Commission’s mouth I don’t think it would have any substantial complaint with the way in which we have engaged with it over the past three or so years.

On top of this we are also working with the Commission on a major project that will see an unprecedented amount of data relating to child sexual abuse perpetrated by Catholic priests and religious collected and provided to the Commission. This will become publically available when completed. I don’t think any other institution is doing anything similar.

We have also done a mountain of public policy work around issues relating to child safety which the Commission has identified through its ‘Issues Papers’ process.

I think it is safe to say we are among just a hand full of organisations that have made submissions to all ten papers ranging across topics such as the risk of child sexual abuse in schools, police and prosecution responses to abuse survivors, crime compensation schemes, Out-of-Home Care, redress schemes and civil litigation.

Despite this, and much more, there is a palpable, broad-based doubt that we are not fully on-board with the Commission. I think there is little doubt this can be sheeted home to one fundamentally, dominant factor: the loss of trust in the Catholic Church which is now seared into the frontal lobes of most people’s minds.

I’m confident it will take more than a Royal Commission for trust in the Church to be broadly rebuilt, despite the continuing strong commitment across the community to Catholic health, welfare and education services.

It will probably take another generation because when you have an institution like the Church breaking its most fundamental of trusts – the care of the children and the vulnerable – people just say the hypocrisy is too hard to swallow.

Ballarat Directions Hearing, National Redress……
Francis Sullivan - 11 February 2016

The big news this week has been the decision by Royal Commission Chair Justice McClellan, to hear Cardinal Pell's evidence by video from Rome. He also agreed to Bishop Mulkearns' request to give evidence, albeit in constrained circumstances.

In both cases it is vital that the evidence from both bishops be made available as soon as is practicable.

The Ballarat and Melbourne case studies have now dragged on since the middle of last year. Victims have given testimony and so too have many Church officials and priests. Already there has been a lot aired in the media including very intense speculation over serious allegations.

Clearly we are still left with many questions and not enough answers.

Cardinal Pell has said consistently on the record that he wants to assist the Royal Commission and he has already given evidence in two previous hearings. His personal circumstances have complicated this hearing but they will not inhibit the main game, that is giving evidence and answering all that the Royal Commission is seeking to ask.

Bishop Mulkearns, although gravely ill, likewise wants to co-operate with the Commission. Let's hope that he can give useful information on the range of issues that others have placed before the Commission for consideration.

Over the next few weeks the effectiveness of Justice McClellan's decision will play out.

Meanwhile the confusion over the Federal Government's redress announcement is beginning to bite. Even though the general thrust of the announcement aligned with the second-best option from the Royal Commission on the provision of national redress, it is still very unclear to what degree the Commonwealth Government will support nationally consistent state-based schemes.

What about the children who were abused in Commonwealth services or in organisations doing the work of the Commonwealth? Where will their redress come from? What attitude will the Commonwealth government take to the social security payments of people who receive a redress payment from a state scheme? Will the Commonwealth contribute to a pool of funds to provide redress to those persons who were abused in organisations that no longer exist?

These are but some of the questions that are bound to be on the table when the inter government discussions finally get underway. So far the Commonwealth remains silent.

Little wonder that some state officials are expressing lukewarm enthusiasm for the talks. Will they just go through the motions assuming that the Commonwealth is half-hearted and has no intention of becoming financially involved?

These are challenging days. Victims and survivors are vulnerable. Their voice is easily drowned out when governments flex muscle. Faith-based institutions, at the very least, need to get alongside the victims and help advocate for a fair, consistent system of redress that will deliver just reparation to victims, regardless of where or when they were abused.

Commonwealth redress response - slow train coming
Francis Sullivan - 4 February 2016

In its long awaited response to the Royal Commission’s redress recommendations the Federal Government last Friday released a statement saying it will work with the states and territories to set up a national framework to offer compensation to victims of institutional child sexual abuse.

The statement, thin on detail and long on rhetoric, seems to be saying that the Commonwealth won’t be setting up a scheme but rather looking to the states to establish individual schemes run out of each state and territory but under a set of national principles.

While this is the second best option proposed by the Commission, it is a far cry from what survivors, most of the major institutions and some of the bigger states have called for.

While it is good to see the Commonwealth respond it's been a very slow train coming.

I think the best that can be said about the announcement is that the Commonwealth has now placed redress on the agenda of all governments, there is now a process and hopefully things will start to move a bit quicker.

The big problem however with what the Commonwealth seems to be proposing is that by running individual schemes in different states and territories survivors from different places around the country will inevitably, be treated differently.

The facts are that regardless of how hard the Commonwealth works to ensure that all states operate their redress schemes in the same way it is an absolute certainly that over not a very long time they will start to differ from each other.

And when this happens we will be back to Day One where abuse survivors seeking compensation are being treated differently depending on where they were abused and what state they live in.

Also, and I don’t mean to be unkind to treasury officials and bureaucrats, but you can bet London to a brick that they will be looking to build schemes that cost their governments the least possible amount. That’s their job. And that means survivors will miss out.

It cannot be left to public servants to decide how, as a nation, we provide redress to victims of child sexual abuse.

We can’t have state and territory governments going down the path of putting their interests before the needs of victims, like the Catholic Church and so many other institutions have.

The people who have been abused as kids are now in the 50s, 60s and 70s and for decades have had no voice. That has changed and now, through the Royal Commission they are being heard.

The plight of survivors needs to be heard by the community, by institutions and by Government and the ramifications of what happened to them needs to be fully understood.

I am concerned that we might find ourselves in the situation where state governments and COAG officials look at the redress proposals in a narrow, self-serving, institutionally defensive way. Or worse, as a tool to be traded on other pressing issues involving the states and the Federal Government, especially in the lead up to a Federal election.

This must not be allowed to happen.

What matters here is the human story not a public policy that is going to be restricted by technocrats who, if it all becomes too hard, can file it away till later.

The Commonwealth has tentatively come to the table and given some sort of direction. What we need now is for leaders to take up the challenge and make sure survivors of CSA get access to consistent, transparent, fair redress regardless of where or when they were subject to the criminal acts of the people they should have been able to trust.

We are heading into the fourth year of the Royal Commission’s ground breaking work. For the Catholic Church, this will be a year of analysis and action. A lot of work has already been done in individual dioceses and religious orders, but there’s a lot to do yet.

Ballarat hearing finishes
Francis Sullivan - 17 December 2015

Sometimes words just are not enough!

At the end of another confronting and shameful public hearing for the Catholic Church the heavy sense of failure pervades our community. It is becoming an all-too-predictable scenario, in that in every case study ineptitude, maladministration, cover ups and corrupt practices have been revealed.

This miserable history cannot be denied, nor can it be rationalised away. The very fact that a faith-based institution would perpetuate such evil is incomprehensible. But it has – and now the time for reckoning has well and truly arrived.

As witness after witness fronts the Royal Commission the pretence falls away. At times the Commission's patience is clearly tested but at least the stark realities are made plain for all to see.

Of course the Ballarat component of these past three and a bit weeks of hearings is only partially completed. It will reconvene again in the New Year in Ballarat. Cardinal Pell will also be required to give his evidence, health permitting. This will be a crucial component and has already been eagerly awaited.

Already this hearing has heard from Bishop Peter Connors about the way bishops and officials made decisions over the movement of priests and the management of abusers. His evidence came on top of Archbishop Denis Hart's frank description of diocesan administrative and canonical processes. Both appearances added a great deal to the understandings of Church decision making in the 1980s and 1990s.

Bishop Brian Finnigan's evidence was focused primarily on his time as secretary and vicar general in Ballarat during the years when paedophile priests Gerald Ridsdale and Paul David Ryan ran rampant across the Diocese. Bishop Finnigan faced intense questioning and at one point was challenged about his credibility and compassion.

I have said many times it is incumbent on all church leaders appearing before the Commission to be open, transparent and honest. To explain what they knew and what they did, as best they can.

While Bishop Finnigan told the Commission this is what he tried to do, it was obvious that it was not well received.

With this coming on top of the decision by Cardinal Pell not to attend the hearing on the advice of his doctors, we finished up with an almost palpable anger in the hearing room which I have never felt so strongly before.

Many have said that this Royal Commission is vitally important for the future of the Catholic Church in Australia. Quite clearly the Church has not been able to be as honest with itself as it has had to be in these hearings. Now the challenge is to explain why this tragic scandal occurred and how it can be prevented from ever happening again.

National redress disappointment, Ballarat hearing resumes
Francis Sullivan - 9 December 2015

This week AAP reports thousands of child sex abuse survivors expecting the Turnbull government to commit to a national redress scheme before Christmas face bitter disappointment.

According to the AAP report hopes the government would, in line with the final recommendation of the child abuse royal commission, announce by year's end its backing of a $4.3 billion scheme are fading, principally because some states are reluctant to come on board.

NSW and Victoria support a national scheme. South Australia doesn’t. Other states are yet to commit. But the states have written to the Prime Minister asking him to clarify the Federal Government’s position.

The Church supports a national scheme that will provide justice for victims. It will be transparent, independent of the Church and other institutions and relatively generous, given the burden of proof will be limited and victims who suffered at the hands of perpetrators who have died will still get access to compensation.

As the work of the Royal Commission continues, it’s clear that while a diabolical number of perpetrators have come from the Catholic Church, other institutions have not escaped the scourge of the abuse of children in their care.

Every week I get calls from survivors of abuse who want to know what is happening - what is coming out of the Royal Commission for victims?

I say to them that the Church backs a national redress scheme, that we have issued guidelines to Church Authorities to ensure they provide an entity that can be sued, backed by insurance and/or assets and that the Council will hopefully be able to make an announcement in the new year regarding an independent body that will set, monitor and report on standards that affect children and vulnerable people in the Church.

I can hear the sighs down the phone line.

The Ballarat hearing resumed in Melbourne this week.

Counsel Assisting the Commission, Gail Furness, told the Commission the second part of the hearing would hear evidence from nine current and former priests in the Ballarat Diocese who were advisors to Bishop Mulkearns. The hearing is focusing on the knowledge of these priests and the response of the diocese in relation to four offending priests, John Day, Gerald Ridsdale, Paul David Ryan and another unnamed priest.

It’s a sorry litany of one account after another of heads in the sand, of the reputation of the church taking precedence over powerless children whose lives have been so tragically affected by systemic abuse. And the criminal activity did not just sit with the Church. We heard allegations from former Victorian police about elaborate efforts to protect the church.

The hearing provides more evidence of why we have to move urgently on reform to provide a safer future for children and vulnerable people in all Australian institutions and to give some hope to people who have been so damaged by the incompetence and criminal activity that has typified past responses.

Melbourne Hearing
Francis Sullivan - 3 December 2015

We are right in the middle of the latest public hearing of the child sex abuse Royal Commission. The examination of paedophile priests in the Melbourne Archdiocese has almost finished and next week abuse in the Ballarat Diocese will come under the microscope.

Two weeks into the hearings and there is a strange sense that the constant stream of abuse stories and maladministration by Church officials is becoming "old news"! Even seasoned journalists, like David Marr, have written of the sense of public fatigue that now surrounds the hearings.

Public coverage has changed with stories about the hearings now appearing well towards the back of the news sections in the papers, little or no coverage on the nightly TV news bulletins and the occasional piece on 7.30 or Lateline. It seems the ABC radio news and current affairs programs along with The Australian consistently file stories outside the online platforms.

Maybe this fatigue is understandable but clearly the disregard for the history of abuse is not.

Sitting in the hearings and listening to victims tell their stories is harrowing, not only for the victims but for those who are here to bear witness to those tragic histories. They are brave people.

Our community owes them so much because through the telling of these stories the scope and depth of abuse, cover ups and mishandling by officials has come to the fore. No longer a 'Catholic issue' only, institutional sex abuse has been a contagion.

So too has been the begrudging acceptance of incompetency, corruption and aggressive defensiveness on the part of the institutions.

In this hearing a number of victims have made statements that spoke volumes about the essence of this scandal. One woman spoke of her abuse at the hands of Fr Peter Searson, a man who has been described variously during this hearing as psychotic, mad and evil.

She struggled to describe the horror of her experience. In doing so she suffered chronically from years of self-doubt, depression and broken relationships. She also spoke of how she has been able to get on her feet, restore her life and enter into a happy marriage and have children.  At the end of her statement she proudly stated her name, Julie Stewart.  A strong person, proud of where she has arrived in life despite the might of resistance she had experienced in her determination to get justice.

Her story was replicated in many ways by another man who appeared before the Commission under a pseudonym. He too described being abused on numerous occasions by ‘Bill’ Baker, initially as a pre-pubescent altar boy. Even after nearly 40 years this man was deeply upset and clearly found speaking about the abuse extremely difficult. He is a courageous and determined person. Sadly he commenced his statement by saying that he had chosen to be known by a pseudonym because "I was too ashamed to use my name"! He did himself proud that day!

The devastating irony of these two stories struck me strongly. Both people have struggled so profoundly with issues of identity, self-belief and a sense of worth. They are victims of a Church that preaches the intrinsic dignity of every person. Yet they have had to get back a sense of their own dignity and personal value by finding nurture and support away from the Church.

During one of the hearing days this week, the Archbishop of Melbourne, Denis Heart was questioned extensively about how his predecessors, the Archbishop of the time, his vicar-generals, other bishops and advisors, responded to allegations by Julie Stewart and others against seven priests who, between them had abused possibly hundreds of children in Melbourne’s outer western suburbs.

Archbishop Hart described the ‘ad hoc’ approach taken to complaints at the time as ‘wholly inadequate’ and that none of the cases before the Commission ‘were properly investigated’. This, he agreed was ‘a terrible failure’.

He accepted that the response of church leaders had often been inadequate and had often left children in danger. He also accepted that church leaders had failed to act on credible information about criminal abuse by priests.

And so it has come to this. A Church dragged into the public forum by the bravery and determination of vulnerable people. A Church admitting failures and moral shortcomings under compulsion, at times too slowly, and often without enough remorse or sense of responsibility.

All this in the name of the Church!

Melbourne Hearing, Church's legal Guidelines
Francis Sullivan - 27 November 2015

We are now at the end of the first week of the Commission’s hearing into the way in which the Archdiocese of Melbourne dealt with years of abuse that took place in the Doveton Parish in outer suburban Melbourne.

This week has focused for the most part on the appalling behaviour of a Parish Priest call Peter Searson who seems to have been some sort of psychotic monster who used the primary schools he had control of in the 1980s as a personal fiefdom.

This week we heard about his perverted activities in the confessional with little children, his brandishing of a hand gun in front of little kids, his killing of a cat, showing children a dead body in a coffin and much more.

We also heard from teachers and a local principal at Doveton’s Holy Family Primary School about the frustration and struggle they endured as they tried to get the Catholic Education Office and Archbishop Frank Little to do something about Searson.

What we heard during the week was the story of a complete failure in administration, a refusal of church leaders to face up to the bleeding obvious and, yet again, the tragic and lifelong damage child sexual abuse has on innocent people.

This week we also released our guidelines on how church authorities being sued for child sexual abuse claims should behave during the legal process.

The guidelines also cover issues such as making records available to the claimants, keeping costs down and paying legitimate claims without litigation. They also call on bishops and congregation leaders to be mindful of the traumatic experience for claimants during litigation.

Significantly the guidelines include a requirement for Church dioceses or religious orders to assist a claimant to identify the correct defendant to respond to legal proceedings.

When we put these guidelines together we thought that making this requirement would be enough to assure survivors and their lawyers that what is known as the ‘Ellis defence’ wouldn’t be called into play.

It hasn’t been and over the past week we have heard from a few prominent lawyers saying the guidelines don’t go far enough, and they might be right.

After having talked with one of these lawyers at the Melbourne hearing earlier this week I think we might have to consider what we released earlier this week as a ‘working draft’ and revisit, particularly, what we have said about identifying a proper defendant in child sex abuse claims.

Paris attacks and Melbourne hearing
Francis Sullivan - 20 November 2015

These are very somber and frightening days.

The Paris attacks have sent shock and threat across the Western world. Not that terrorism is new or unfortunately unfamiliar to the lives of so many across the globe, it is the fact that it now disturbs the centre of Western comfort and security that is so unsettling.

A fear of loss of safety and control and a sense of the future now permeates our communities. A fear that brews more fear, revenge and suspicion, where violence begets violence.

This cycle of despair and destruction plays out on the big stage and the small.

Next week the Royal Commission will start its 35^th public hearing and the 12^th into a Catholic institution.

The hearing will be broken into two parts – the first couple of weeks looking at abuse that took place in and around Doveton’s Holy Family Parish and Primary School in the 1970s and the way in which the then Archbishop, Frank Little responded to claims of abuse by another six priests in the Archdiocese of Melbourne in the 70s and 80s.

The second part of the hearing is a continuation of the Ballarat hearing which started in May this year in Ballarat. Cardinal Pell is expected to give evidence about his involvement in both case studies first as a priest in Ballarat and then as an Auxiliary Bishop to Archbishop Little in Melbourne.

It’s expected Cardinal Pell will appear in the final week of the hearing which is scheduled to finish on Fri 18 December.

While I am loath to make a comparison between the atrocities in Paris and the child abuse scandal in the Catholic Church the ramifications for victims and their families can be similar.

Victims of terrorist attacks and other gratuitous acts of violence often replay the events in their minds as they try to come to terms with the senseless horror visited on their lives.

So too survivors of clerical child sexual abuse express similar turmoil. Yet this terror is often not understood in the same vein as we recognise the injustice of the random evil of terrorist attacks.

Victims of clerical abuse were innocent prey to random evil.

The fact that it has taken our Church so long to fully appreciate the depth and scope of this is in itself an abuse for all the Church stands for and preaches.

So again it becomes incumbent on all the Church witnesses appearing before this next Royal Commission hearing to be fully cooperative, to speak the truth without defensiveness or anger.

To as best they can explain their involvement in the Commission’s investigation with openness and transparency so all can see that the Church continues to come before the Royal Commission prepared to reveal all, come what may.

Learning As We Go: The Pope Models the Change the Church Needs
Francis Sullivan - 12 November 2015

Ever since the conclusion of the recent Synod in Rome, I have been thinking about the signals of change that Pope Francis is sending. He does it in words and by his disposition.

Observers at the Synod frequently commented on the informal and casual style of the Pope. He mixed easily and readily with participants. He didn't stand on ceremony and was eager for a chat - more a "first among equals" than some sovereign ruler.

This in itself is a marked difference from previous popes. He personifies what he extols: openness, inclusion and "learning as we go."

It's not hard to see how such a disposition pays dividends in a world in which the search for truth and meaning can seem so clouded and even crowded out with competing voices, philosophies and ideologies. The fact that Francis doesn't purport to "have it all sorted" only deepens his appeal to the rest of us who struggle at times to find certainty and a sure path in life.

Pope Francis has a mantra. He speaks often of the mercy of God, not divine judgement. He wants to remind us of the importance of the human heart, the innate urge to feel for others, understand their plight and seek to help. He wants us to see this as the first and most important of the human responses. This is a disposition that builds bridges and heals wounds; a perspective that seeks to restore relationships, nourish people and promote harmony, not division.

Only this week he spoke of a Church unafraid to question itself, live with doubts and the discomfort of interrogating its assumptions; a place of dialogue, with a willingness to embrace the new and the awkward. A church that seeks to reform through becoming unsettled, unsure but close to people, their circumstances, sense of isolation and travail. A church more like a meeting square than a brick bastion.

This reminds me of what Simone Weil meant by paying attention. She said that in order to get a sense of what is true we need to suspend our own agenda and concerns and shift the focus of our attention on to that we encounter. In so doing, the truth of that encounter, that dynamic within the dialogue, will be revealed.

This is similar to the maxim that listening is the first step towards wisdom. To listen well is to be aware of the voices in ourselves that try to understand another person long before we have actually heard them. Letting go of preconceived perspectives, attitudes and even understandings is the challenge for a pilgrim church if dedication to truth is to be its hallmark.

The irony is that, in becoming disturbed or, as the Pope puts it, "uncomfortable" - maybe even knocked off course - we are strangely on a pathway more to do with God than any human construct of the Divine.

At one level, we should not be surprised to hear a pope speak and act like this. The fact that we are surprised speaks volumes for the institutional persona the Church has cultivated in many quarters these days.

Critics see the Church as being harsh on human nature, uncompromising with its take on the truth and immovable in its attitudes. In its response to child sex abuse, the Church too regularly failed the test of moral leadership, hid behind institutional protectionism and sought to excuse itself as just another institution with some "bad eggs" in the basket.

It spent too long exhausting institutional resources to justify, contextualise and even rationalise away the problem, rather than in humbly admitting its failures as far up the line as they went. The upshot has been in collapse of trust and the consolidation of the public image of a Church that not only speaks of arrogance and indifference, but that also fails to "feel with" those abused and disenchanted.

Too often Church officials wanted understanding before they expressed mercy. We didn't get the problem before it became a tsunami. We didn't get what victims and their families were saying and the reach of the tentacles of abuse within the Church. We didn't get the imperative to cry out in shame and seek atonement. And when we did, it looked too late.

God have mercy!

NSW and Vic Governments back national redress while SA digs in deeper against the scheme; and the cost of the crisis to the US Catholic Church
Francis Sullivan - 6 November 2015

The South Australian Government continues to stand out from all states in its opposition to a national redress scheme for the survivors of child sexual abuse, despite the NSW and Victorian Governments now on the record supporting the plan.

This week ABC Online reports that South Australian Premier Jay Weatherill thinks it is “…a bit rich to be asked to fund a second scheme once we've funded the first scheme.”

The South Australian redress scheme has paid out just under $1.2 million to 85 survivors abused in state-run facilities – an average of just $14,100 per payment.

The huge problem with this is that the Royal Commission has estimated that there are in the order of 1,150 survivors of South Australian state-based abuse who are, under the Commission’s proposal, entitled to some $67 million over ten years.

Premier Weatherill said he would not be committing any state funding to a national scheme but would support a fully funded one.

On the basis of this it is clear Premier Weatherill supports the idea of survivors abused in South Australian State Government care receiving more redress but he wants the rest of the country to pay for it, not his government.

Premier Weatherill stands alone as the leader of a major institution – the South Australian Government – demanding that the rest of the country should be paying for abuse perpetrated in his State by South Australian state-based institutions.

If any other leader from any other institution be it a church, a school, a swimming association or a yoga centre were to take the same position they would be roundly, and rightly, condemned.

How it is that Premier Weatherill thinks this is a reasonable position, I’m sure is beyond the thinking of most people.

This week the National Catholic Reporter in the US has reported on the publication of research by Jack Ruhl and Diane Ruhl, which has put a $3.99 billion cost so far of the child sexual abuse crisis in the US Catholic Church.  The researchers call their numbers "solid" but also "a very conservative estimate."

In Australia the Royal Commission data suggests that over the coming ten years the Catholic Church is liable for somewhere between $800 million and $1 billion in additional redress payments. This is on top of some $200 million that’s already been paid out.

In an editorial on the research the National Catholic Reporter says:

The church has burned through $3.99 billion since this crisis began. That money will never be replaced. The institutional church has made great strides in recent years in stemming the incidents of sexual abuse by its clergy. The next step is to rebuild the trust of its people. A major step in that regard is working toward complete financial transparency at the diocesan level.

This is just as applicable here as it is in the US.

Labor backs Commission’s redress while SA government continues to back away
Francis Sullivan - 29 October 2015

While it was great news this week when the ALP federally came out and fully backed in the redress recommendations of the Royal Commission it is the Government that we are all waiting to hear from.

The silence from the Commonwealth is now starting to become an embarrassment.

The Royal Commission’s recommendations have been with Senator Brandis since at least September 14 and all we hear when asked by the media is ‘the Government is considering the Royal Commission's recommendations’ and ‘would consult with state and territory colleagues before committing to a response’.

Fair enough – but how long does it take. And why can’t the community, which has fully backed the Commission, now at least know how this consultation will take place.

It’s not too much to ask that the Commonwealth gives some indication that it is actually moving, that it is doing the work to bring together the states so that the discussions can be had and the decisions made.

And that said, it is well past time the Government started talking to the key non-government institutions which will need to part of the scheme, the churches, the private schools, sports organisations and others

And there has been no consultation from the Government – no one has come to us and said ‘what do you think?’ or ‘how can this all work?’ or ‘where do you see the problems?’.

Any discussions we have had with the Government have been at our initiative, but unfortunately not with the people who actually make these important decisions.

For the scheme to work, everyone needs to be on-board – Governments from around Australia and all institutions that deal with children.

Maybe the Commonwealth is silent while it negotiates with the South Australian Government to at least be open to the idea of the redress proposal.

The South Australian Government has come out again this week pouring cold water over the Commission’s redress plans saying it will not back Labor’s support for a national compensation scheme unless it is "fully-funded".

I think you can read this as saying the South Australian Government is not prepared to pay a cent more than what it is obliged to pay under the ex-gratia scheme it set up in 2009 – which hasn’t been much.

Up to December last year some 85 survivors of child sexual abuse in South Australian state care had received a little under $1.2 million with an average payment of $14,400 through its redress scheme.

This is despite the Commission making it clear in its costing document in July that the South Australian Government is potentially exposed, at the very least, to some $67 million in payments to 1,150 adult survivors of child sexual abuse within state care.

On these figures it appears the South Australian Government has paid, at best, 1.8 percent so far of what the Commission estimates child sexual abuse survivors in state care should receive.

And even worse, only 7.4 percent of child sexual abuse survivors seemed to have received any redress through that government’s redress scheme.

If South Australia continues to snub the Commission’s redress proposal and insists on going its own way there will be many hundreds of child sexual abuse survivors in that state who will miss out or receive next to nothing for the abuse they endured in state homes and other South Australian government institutions.

Now that’s a crime.

New CSA evidence laws in NSW, Blackfriars Speech and Blue Knot Day
Francis Sullivan - 22 October 2015

This week the NSW Government introduced new laws to make it easier for child victims of child sexual abuse to give evidence in court.

Under the new laws child sexual abuse victims will be able to pre-record all of their evidence.

Importantly, children giving evidence will also be supported through the court process by a qualified expert who will help them and give advice on how they should be questioned.

This is a great initiative that will make an already very difficult process for young children just a little bit easier.

Hopefully it will mean more perpetrators will be brought to justice.

The new approach will be trialled for three years; hopefully it will be a success and could then be adopted by other jurisdictions.

This week I gave a speech at the ACU in Canberra where I spoke about many different issues confronting the Church as we come to terms with our history of child sex abuse.

I spoke about the church’s culture, in particular clericalism and the misuse of power, which from nearly everyone I talk to from current archbishops to abuse survivors say is the weeping sore in the Catholic Church.

And from what I’ve seen and heard it is at the core of the crisis, we cannot hide from this. It needs to be confronted, as I think it is, and it needs to be acknowledged. The Pope is talking about it and I think we would do well to talk about it more as well.

I have had a bit of push back since giving the speech with people concerned I don’t give enough credit to new child protection initiatives in the Church.

I have also been criticised for seemingly suggesting the negative way in which church officials treated abuse survivors in the past is the way in which they are treated now.

I don’t agree with these comments but I’m always pleased to hear from anyone who has a view on what and how I’m talking about the Royal Commission. I always respond and I always take these views into account.

This coming Monday is Blue Knot Day, the day in which survivors of child sexual abuse are acknowledged and the community is asked to support initiatives that help them recover.

This year's Blue Knot Day theme is "supportive communities help survivors recover".

The day is organised by ASCA which this year is asking local communities to unite in support of the adult survivors living among them.

Sacred Heart visit, The Salvation Army, Redress
Francis Sullivan - 15 October 2015

Sacred Heart visit, The Salvation Army, Redress

On Monday night I gave a talk to around 40 people gathered at Sacred Heart College in Oakleigh in Melbourne.

Oakleigh carries the scars of infamous paedophile Kevin O’Donnell who was parish priest there for almost 20 years until his retirement in 1992.

This is the first parish visit I have made for a couple of months and I am still inspired by the depth of concern and interest that ordinary Catholics have in the Royal Commission.

People also want to know how, as a church, we are trying to find a way to deliver justice and compassion for abuse survivors. And they also want to know what they can do to help survivors.

The abuse crisis has left a deep wound in the Catholic Church that is still a long way from healed.

While we all hope for healing, for survivors, their families and their supporters, it is a long and slow process. Just as it is for the Church itself as we all continue to come to terms with our history.

Many survivors live a secret life with horror and dread, misery and terror. The abuse they endured shapes the way they live their adult life. For some it’s a life of constant dysfunction.

We also need to face up to the ‘secret life’ within our Church. We need to acknowledge and work to understand the culture of denial and of the dangers of contextualising, minimising and rationalising historical abuse.

Every day we need to push for greater openness and transparency so the wounds of both survivors and the Church can heal.

There continues to be confusion on how the Commonwealth and the state governments will respond to the Commission’s recommendations on redress for abuse survivors.

The silence from the Feds is making it difficult for survivors who this week saw the Salvation Army seemingly do an ‘about face’ on how they will approach ‘topping up’ payments already made to survivors.

On Monday the Salvation Army territorial commander, Floyd Tidd, told the Royal Commission public hearing in Adelaide that even if a victim’s compensation was inappropriate, there would be no top up until the federal government responded to the commission’s redress proposals.

The next day he said if any claims were assessed to unfair they would be reopened and eligible for top-up payments without waiting for any national or state-based redress scheme.

I mention this confusion only to emphasis the pressing need for the Commonwealth to start addressing the Commission’s redress proposals.

I should add here that settlements are being reviewed by some dioceses and orders in the Catholic Church now even though a redress scheme is a possibility.

If the Commonwealth and the States don’t start talking soon about their intensions for the Commission’s redress proposal more and more institutions will be left in the same situation as the Salvos – not really wanting to commit to a new process without first understanding where we are headed with a national redress scheme.

Pope Francis' US Visit, Redress...
Francis Sullivan - 7 October 2015

Pope Francis certainly made a hit in the United States last week. Expectations were sky high and there were commentators on every street corner with their take on what he said, didn’t say or should have said. So, since it‘s the season to ‘have a view of Francis’ it’s my turn.

The Pope’s address to the United States Congress was a cracker! I was particularly taken with his singling out of Dorothy Day and Thomas Merton. Both ‘giants’ in the modern US Church, strong social advocates and people of the Gospel.

Individuals who bravely forged pathways to address contemporary social ills and abuses of human dignity. The parallels for the challenge facing the Church over its handling of sexual abuse were obvious to me.

When mentioning Dorothy Day he highlighted her passion for justice and for the cause of the oppressed. She lived a life of real solidarity with victims of an oppressive system. She identified with their plight and didn’t rest until it could be alleviated. She was the Gospel in action.

So too with Thomas Merton, the Cistercian monk. Very tellingly, the Pope said of Merton that he was “a man of prayer, a thinker who challenged the certitudes of his time and opened new horizons for souls and for the Church”. This is very poignant. The Pope is clearly saying that nothing is set in concrete.

That real change is needed to address injustice, to enable inclusivity and the Church needs to be part of that change. Powerful words and images in a country that for too long has been riven with ‘cultural wars’ within the Church to the detriment of being an effective campaigner for social justice beyond its walls.

And this definitely applies to the sex abuse scandal.

US dioceses, one after another, have fallen foul of the courts as the depth and scope of the clerical abuse scandal is revealed. It is almost as if the US church has spent so long protecting itself that the necessary actions to promote justice are only recently gaining any real attention.  It seems pretty clear that the Pope sees a Church turned in on itself, more concerned with justification than embracing the message of outreach inherent in the Gospel, is an institution lost to the world.

The Church needs to provide horizons of hope for people, regardless of their circumstance or relationship to the Church. People need to feel the passion and warmth that belief engenders. The only certitude in our complex and diverse world is the value of compassion – its capacity to break down barriers, heal rifts and build communities. As always, actions will speak louder than words.

So too for us in Australia. As the Royal Commission begins yet another examination of a church-based institution we cannot succumb to the inevitable fatigue these hearings bring to the public consciousness.

For too long the depth and scope of institutional child abuse has been hidden from the community.

The fact that institution after institution has mishandled, covered up and unjustly dealt with victims is a damning indictment. So too is the fact that so many victims have received little or no redress from those institutions that the Royal Commission has had to accelerate its recommendations for a national redress system to be established.

Yet our governments are effectively lying low. They either want to shift responsibility amongst themselves or they posture over the efforts they previously made for some victims on some occasions.

The demands of justice seem straight forward. Victims of child sexual abuse within institutions, no matter where or when, deserve access to an independent, generous redress scheme. Only our governments can put that in place. And only the institutions responsible for the abuse should pay that compensation.

State and territory AGs want clarity from Federal Government on redress…
and so does everyone else
Francis Sullivan - 1 October 2015

This week we have seen some very significant moves by governments around Australia to get some idea of how the federal government plans respond to the Royal Commission’s proposal for a redress scheme for institutional child sexual abuse survivors.

Last Friday, state and territory attorneys-general sent a joint letter to federal Attorney-General, George Brandis, asking for clarification of the Commonwealth's position on the proposed redress scheme.

In the letter the attorneys-general wrote:

“The Royal Commission’s recommendations have identified a clear role for the Commonwealth, including that the Commonwealth announce its willingness to establish a national scheme by the end of 2015.

The Commonwealth’s response will have significant ramifications for the States and Territories. Accordingly, we request the earliest possible indication from the Commonwealth as to whether it intends to establish and fund a national redress scheme.”

I have also written to Prime Minister Turnbull requesting a meeting to discuss the redress proposal and to get an indication of where the Commonwealth government is headed.

As I said on the ABC’s PM program this week, the Commonwealth has not been clear with the community. It has now become obvious that child sexual abuse is a huge social issue. It is a tragedy that can be found in many different institutions, government and non-government, across many decades.

And as a major national social issue our policy and law makers have a role to play, along with institutions such as the Catholic Church, in addressing it. The new Prime Minister now has the opportunity to demonstrate that as political leaders, he and his state and territory colleagues will respond proactively and positively.

Survivors and stakeholders have been waiting close to ten months for a considered response from the Commonwealth to the Royal Commission’s preferred option for a redress scheme, which was outlined for the first time in its redress consultation paper released in January. The proposal was formally put as a recommendation to governments last month in the Royal Commission’s redress and civil litigation report.

All we have seen so far from the Commonwealth is a dismissive response to January’s consultation paper and silence in response to the final redress report.

The Commonwealth’s official response to the Royal Commission’s proposal in January washed its hands of playing any part in a redress scheme for child sexual abuse survivors.

The three-page submission, which looked like it had been knocked together at short notice and with little thought by the Attorney-General’s Department, was nothing short of a disgrace, an insult to abuse survivors who have waited decades to hear a considered position on redress from the Commonwealth.

What is pleasing is that the Commonwealth seems to have reconsidered its earlier position and is now, according to media reports, looking to discuss the redress proposal with state and territory governments at the next Council of Australian Governments meeting in November. This is great news.

The pressure on the federal government to play a role in establishing and operating a national redress scheme is mounting. We are hearing it from survivors and their supporters, from other governments, from institutions and from the general public.

The time has come for government action.

The Commonwealth government needs to lay out how it intends to respond to the Royal Commission’s recommendations and confirm this important social issue will be part of November’s COAG meeting.

Australia needs a national approach to child safety in schools
Francis Sullivan – 24 September 2015

This week we sent off to the Royal Commission our latest response to its policy development program.

This is the ninth Royal Commission issues paper we have responded to on behalf of the Catholic Church in Australia. This time the policy issue is focused on ensuring children are safe in schools.

Our submission has been developed with major contributions from Catholic school authorities across Australia.

One of the great tragedies revealed over the past three years of Royal Commission public hearings is the extent to which children have been sexual abused in schools – private and public.

According to the Commission around a third of people who have come forward to tell their story suffered sexual abuse at their school.

Sadly, the people they should have been able to trust the most, teachers, religious and clerics, took advantage of their positions of authority to abuse the most vulnerable.

In this submission we have recommended to the Commission a series of common-sense proposals that would make schools safer and make it simpler for school authorities to understand regulatory requirements across all states and territories.

We have called for national consistency in school registration, teacher training and mandatory reporting requirements.

We have asked the Commission to consider recommending national protocols to define more clearly how schools and police work together when investigating allegations of abuse within the school.

We have recommended a national Working With Children Check be implemented as soon as possible, national standards through the National Safe Schools Framework and consistent legislation for government and non-government schools.

One of the huge challenges the Commission and governments face when trying to put in place more effective protections for children is the very nature of our federation: a political system in which states and territories are for the most part independent of each other and the Federal Government.

One of the great achievements of this Royal Commission would be if it were able to convince governments to ‘harmonise’ the many different laws that relate to child protection.

This would provide a more secure safeguarding environment for our children across Australia, simplify enforcement processes and ensure that the responsibilities of all institutions, regardless of where they operate, were known and understood.

The TJHC submission can be found here:

/media/107157/150918-TJHC-SUBMISSION-Issues-Paper-9-Final-2-.pdf

Redress recommendations, Melbourne Response report and
new Jesuit child protection policy
Francis Sullivan September 16, 2015

Redress recommendations from the Royal Commission

The Royal Commission this week released its final report containing recommendations to Australian governments on how to set up a redress scheme for child sexual abuse survivors and also changes to the way courts and institutions should respond to civil claims.

It was tabled in the Commonwealth Parliament on the day that, once again, we saw a change in the nation’s leadership.

The momentous events of this past Monday, to a large extent, masked the release of the report and saw media coverage of it pushed to middle pages of the nation’s newspapers with some online coverage.

This is a shame and an unfortunate bit of timing for the Commission and for survivors.

The report, which is broadly in line with the suggestions the Catholic Church made in TJHC submissions back in March this year and August last year, is comprehensive.

A significant point of difference was where funding should come from to cover redress for survivors who were abused in institutions that no longer exist and which have with no links to an existing institution.

We suggested a small increase on insurance premiums for all institutions that deal with children to cover this gap. The Commission has gone with this shortfall being picked up by Governments. The estimated cost to the ‘funder of last resort’ is in the order of $613 million – the final call on this will ultimately be made by our lawmakers across the country.

As I’ve said before the ball is now very much in the court of the Federal Government to determine whether it will support a national redress scheme and the civil litigation reforms proposed by the Royal Commission.

New Jesuit child protection policy

It was pleasing to see the release late last week of the new child and vulnerable people protection policy from the Australian Province of the Society of Jesus.

The policy reflects the ever increasing awareness Catholic institutions and the broader community have of the many different issues associated with child sexual abuse and protecting children and vulnerable people.

And while, for many years, Church leaders have been strengthening the policies that protect school children, children in homes and other welfare environments there is an ever increasing understanding of risks other vulnerable people face.

Clericalism is far from dead and it can still have a controlling effect over some people who come under the influence of priests and religious.

Isolated and single people with little or no support can become victims of inappropriate behaviour, as can the mentally ill or disabled, the aged and the ill.

The Jesuit policy is a comprehensive document designed to ensure that anyone in the care of or involved with the Province is provided a safe and supporting environment.

It is a major piece of work that will go a long way to lifting the shadow of abuse through transparency, genuine contrition and meaningful reconciliation

The new Jesuit policy follows the release earlier this year by the Christian Brothers Oceania of guiding principles for responding to civil claims of child sexual abuse.

The Principles are aimed at minimising the potential further trauma for survivors during civil claims and they draw on the commitment of the Christian Brothers to work with those who have suffered abuse with both care and compassion.

Royal Commission release finding from the Melbourne response hearing

This week also saw the release of the Royal Commission’s final report following its public hearing into the Melbourne Response last year.

The report has made a range of comments on some people involved with the administration of the Melbourne Response and advisors to the Archdiocese.

And the report is critical of the independence of the process, potential for conflict of interest and advice relating to police reporting.

From my perspective what is significant also is that this report was tabled in Parliament on the same day as the Commission’s report on redress.

It is clear from reading both these documents that the best way forward now for survivors is an independent national redress scheme that provides fair and just and consistent redress for people regardless of where, when or who abused them.

Police reporting and the need for new nationally consistent law
Francis Sullivan
9 September 2015

The failure of headmasters, bishops, administrators and others to report allegations of child sexual abuse to the police has been a recurring theme in many of the 30-plus public hearings the Royal Commission has held so far.

It has shocked many people and seems to be an unbelievable way, even at the time, in which otherwise committed and conscientious people responded when told about abuse taking place under their watch.

For many different reasons institutional leaders have made deliberate decisions when told by a parent or a young person of sexual abuse to deal with it themselves, internally, undercover.

They often either ignored the claim or moved the alleged perpetrator away from his victims and their families.

This week’s media coverage of the Geelong Grammar School hearing is bringing to light yet another example where, allegedly, a school principal failed to report a child sex abuse allegation preferring to encourage the perpetrating teacher to resign with a hefty payout.

This operating procedure is repeated in many Catholic dioceses and congregations where offending priests and brothers have been moved from parish to parish, school to school, rather than reported to authorities.

The TJHC, in its most recent submission to the Royal Commission Issues paper looking into Police and Prosecution Responses to allegations of child sexual abuse, has called for a new, consistent nation-wide criminal provision requiring the reporting to the police of suspected child sexual abuse.

The new law should require anyone who has a reasonable belief that a sexual offence has been committed against a child to disclose what they know to the police.

The only circumstance in which this would not be required is if the person has a reasonable excuse, such as where the person believes the allegations have already been reported under mandatory reporting laws.

A law such as this would require all allegations to be reported to the police. The current situation around Australia is at best confusing and at worst negligent.

In NSW the law requires serious crimes to be reported to the police and in Victoria the Crimes Act was amended last year to introduce a provision for the reporting to the police of possible sexual offences against children. However, these are the only states where similar obligations exist.

And while all states and territories have mandatory reporting laws requiring reports to be made to a range of different child protection agencies where children are at risk, there is a yawning gap about informing the police of possible sexual offences. The gap needs to be plugged.

Over the past two and a half years we have heard many reasons given for why allegations weren’t reported, ranging from ‘I didn’t know it was a crime’ to ‘we thought it best to deal with it internally’.

These reasons seem incredible and are completely unacceptable today.

New, nationally consistent, police reporting legislation would enhance a consistent, trauma informed approach to survivors of child sexual abuse across Australia.

Commission at halfway point
Francis Sullivan
2 September 2015

We are now hard on the half way mark of the Royal Commission, both in terms of the time allocated and the public policy and examination work it has set itself. 

By the end of the year it will have undertaken 33 of the up to 60 public hearings it indicated would form the examination component of its work.

Commissioner McClellan has indicated that what will surely be the last of the public hearings involving the Church will take place in early 2017. This hearing will look in more depth at a range of cultural, institutional and systemic issues that have been touched on during public hearings so far but haven’t been the subject of dedicated examination. 

The big questions of what it was about the culture of the Catholic Church at the time that led to the extent of child sexual abuse and why it was responded to the way it was will come into focus. 

That hearing will likely look more closely at the role of the Vatican in the crisis, issues such as clerical training, the screening of candidates for the priesthood and religious life, the impact of clericalism, the management of offenders and  the role of women, amongst others.

There is little doubt that by the end of 2017 the number of public hearings into the operations of the church will leave few, if any, stones unturned.

What we can expect between now and this final hearing is very much up in the air. 

What is certain is that the second half of the Ballarat hearing will be conducted and undoubtedly there will be more hearings involving the Church in 2016.

I know that for some Catholics this appears to be ‘overkill’ and too focussed on the Church at the expense of other, including government, institutions. However, on the statistics alone, the Church is the single largest grouping that is mentioned by survivors - on last report that was close to 40 percent.

On a related issue, the media attention easily slips to personalities. Whether its Bishop Heenan in Rockhampton, or retired Bishop Mulkearns or Cardinal Pell for that matter the impression can be made that the purpose of the Commission is to get some ‘scalps’ when in fact it is required to examine how institutions went about handling child sex abuse cases.

Of course institutions are made up of individuals, but they work within a culture and an environment and it is that focus which is at the heart of the Commission’s work.

The end of 2016 will also see much of the public research and policy work well underway. So far the Commission has finished its policy development on Working with Children Checks and made final recommendations on redress and civil litigation.

It has taken submissions on a range of other issues including child safe institutions, out of home care, victims of crime schemes and police reporting.

If the policy development around these issues is similar to redress and working with children then by the close of the Commission in late 2017 we will have an un-paralleled raft of new child safety research and policy recommendations. 

That said, there is still a significant body of research work to be done.

The Commissioner has made it very clear its final report will be with the Government by the end of 2017. 

It will then be up to our law makers to decide the direction in which they want to take the nation and the extent to which they are prepared to make clear and divisive decisions to protect children and to deliver justice.

The first test for governments comes within the next few weeks. As I mentioned the Commission’s report on redress for abuse survivors has been given to the Governor-General and, we assume, is now with the Federal and all other state and territory Governments.

The rubber has now hit the road. I have already made it plain that the first thing the Prime Minister should do after absorbing the 600 plus page report is to call a meeting of all state and territory leaders: premiers, chief ministers and their attorney-generals.

This meeting needs to provide the community with a clear agenda including timing on how the Commission’s recommendations on redress are going to be implemented.

If there is push back from any of these authorities it needs to be made public so we are all aware of which governments object to survivors of child sexual abuse receiving, at last, a fair go.

If there isn’t clear action within a short time of the release of the Commission’s redress report then Australian governments are telling the community that Royal Commission recommendations aren’t worth the paper they are written on.

Bishop Robinson before the Commission and report into abuse in the Scottish Church
Francis Sullivan
27 August 2015

RC redress recommendations go to Government next week
Next week the Royal Commission will send its recommendations on redress and civil litigation reforms to the Governor-General. We would expect it to be released publically very shortly after.

Its recommendations and the response from governments, state and federal, will clearly signal what, and the extent to which, survivors can expect our law makers to respond to the years of suffering and injustice they have endured.

Next week, as one by one, we see what our governments say about redress we will be able to truly gauge their commitment and willingness to stand up for abuse survivors.

As I’ve said before, redress for survivors is at the very centre of this Commission’s work – unless government’s respond positively to its recommendations then, tragically, survivors could well be left fighting their own fight against too many well resources and unsympathetic institutions who will again be let off the hook.

Bishop Geoffrey Robinson and Commission hearing
This week retired Bishop Geoffrey Robinson was the sole witness in a one-day Royal Commission hearing which looked at his involvement across some five decades of dealing with child sexual abuse within the Church. 

Bishop Robinson, who was a bishop for 31 years in the Sydney Archdiocese and a priest for 54 years, has spoken out and written widely urging "profound and enduring change" and a more compassionate approach by the Church to victims of abuse. 

His views and position within the Church are not universally accepted and he has often been in conflict with his fellow bishops.

At the hearing he gave evidence about the development of Towards Healing, his membership of the College of Consultors of the Archdiocese of Sydney, the operation of Encompass Australasia, his involvement with senior Vatican officials and many other issues.

His evidence will be used in a public hearing in early 2017 into the broader response of the Catholic Church to child sexual abuse by clergy and religious. 

Bishop Robinson made a point of highlighting the hard work of many people over the years as the Church moved towards a more compassionate approach to survivors of child sexual abuse. 

Interestingly much of his evidence, as could be said for many church leaders who have come before the Commission, is reflected in a report released this week into child abuse and the Catholic Church in Scotland.

The Scottish Commission releases report into CSA in Scottish Catholic Church
The Scottish Commission, led by Dr Andrew McLellan CBE, former Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland and former Chief Inspector of Prisons for Scotland, described the abuse crisis as “the greatest challenge facing the whole Catholic Church in Scotland”. 

In the report we have again seen the Church criticised for its lack of consistency and transparency in handling historic allegations of abuse.  The report concluded that support for survivors must be the Church’s absolute priority, and said that it had not been so in the past. 

It condemned a culture of secrecy and cover-up that allowed abuse to remain hidden It also made the point that by seeking to avoid scandal, the Church had caused “scandal in a theological sense” to victims and to the wider Catholic population.

It acknowledged the hard work of many within the Church to improve safeguarding, but noted that the Church in Scotland “has not made significant structural changes” in terms of embedding safeguarding in ministry and theology. 

It also called for the Bishops’ Conference of Scotland to be given clear authority to lay down policies and procedures around abuse “which must be followed to the letter in every diocese.” 

It also called for external scrutiny and independence and continuous professional development.

Throughout the world investigations into the way the Catholic Church handled child sexual abuse continue, with many of the final reports making similar findings and recommendations – put victims first, greater accountability, fair and compassionate redress. 

While the Royal Commission here in Australia continues to be a gruelling and challenging process for all involved – survivors in particular – it is encouraging to see Australian Church leaders continuing to push for change.

The process, recommended by the TJHC, to establish an new child protection oversight body within the Church is progressing, changes to the way church authorities approach the courts in child sex abuse claims are in place, and a radical new approach to determining redress for survivors has been fully endorsed by Church leaders. 

This is all progress which has been pushed through by the leaders of both the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference and Catholic Religious Australia.

And while this is good news we still have a long way to go. 

Royal Commission Working With Children Checks report released
Francis Sullivan
20 August 2015 

The Royal Commission has this week released its report on ‘Working with Children Checks’, WWCC, which includes a range of proposed sweeping reforms to the present varied and non-integrated schemes that operate across Australia.

The Commission has recommended the implementation of a national working with children check, describing the lack of action by governments to fix the problems with the current schemes as ‘a significant and inexcusable failure’ that cannot continue to be ignored.

Currently, each state and territory has its own scheme for conducting background checks on people who want to work with children. The Commission has found that the schemes are inconsistent, complex and give a false sense of security to institutions and families.

The report says the problems with people working across borders pose a major problem.

“Organisations and people working across borders report substantial challenges in working with the varied schemes, including extra costs and difficulty understanding and complying with the various laws.” 

The Commission also recommends: 

• activities or services provided by religious leaders, officers or personnel of religious organisations should be included within the definition of child related work

• creation of a standardised approach so that key aspects of WWCC schemes are dealt with in the same way, for example, prescribing who needs a check and how records are assessed

• allowing WWCCs to be portable across jurisdictions

• eliminating the opportunity for forum shopping, whereby potential perpetrators can work in locations with less rigorous checking or where access to adverse records is limited

• improving information sharing so that there is continuous monitoring of WWCC cardholders’ national criminal history records and visibility of WWCC decisions across all jurisdictions

• denial of appeal rights against adverse WWCC decisions in some circumstances

• providing for a system whereby people are either cleared or not cleared, rather than having conditional or role-based clearances.

The recommendation for the inclusion of church activities within the definition of child related work might pick up many voluntary church activities in which children participate. This may require those working in them to obtain a WWCC.

The extent of the obligation that may be imposed on personnel of clubs that have junior sporting teams may also need to be further explored.

It is now over to governments to consider all the recommendations and move to implement them. 

The Commission recommends that the Commonwealth, state and territory governments provide an annual report, for each of the three years following publication of the Commission’s report detailing their progress in implementing the recommendations.

If consistent cross-jurisdiction arrangements can be put in place for WWCC and other key issues then, if the will and the determination is strong enough, it can also happen with redress for child abuse survivors.

As we have seen in so many cases the lack of a national redress scheme has seen hundreds, if not thousands, of child abuse survivors treated by churches and other institutions unfairly and often with disregard.

Putting in place a national scheme in which redress is determined independently but paid for by the institution responsible must be a number one priority for the Commission and for the Governments it is reporting to.

Victorian Government releases CSA consultation paper
Francis Sullivan
12 August 2015

Last week the Victorian Government released its public consultation paper on compensation and redress for survivors of institutional child abuse.

The 38-page paper is part of the Government’s response to recommendations from the 2013 Victorian Parliamentary Inquiry into the Handling of Child Abuse by Religious and Other Non-Government Organisations.

The paper outlines proposals for a redress scheme which are broadly in line with the Royal Commission’s preferred option laid out in its January discussion paper: a direct personal response from the offending institution, access to counselling and psychological care and a financial payment.

Significantly, however, this move appears to be a very clear indication that if a national scheme doesn’t eventuate then Victoria will put in place its own.

The release of this document, the first concrete contribution to the redress debate from any Australian state or territory government since the Commission started in 2013, now puts real pressure on the Commonwealth to get involved.

If the Federal Government fails to respond positively to the Royal Commission’s redress recommendations, due for release this month, then it has the potential to see the major problems survivors of CSA have faced in seeking redress continue for decades to come.

While the move by the Victorian Government must be applauded, in the absence of either a national redress scheme, or at the very least, state-based schemes that are nationally consistent, then abuse survivors will continue to receive compensation based on their postcode rather than the abuse they have suffered.

Too often we have seen the most high profile failure of Federation, the inability for state and territory governments to achieve national regulatory consistency, cripple good policy such as consistent workers compensation, licensing and other administrative processes.

If a national redress scheme becomes victim to similar parochial posturing then the hope of a nationally consistent, independent, generous redress scheme for survivors of CSA is a long way off.

The Victorian Government’s paper says it is open to participating in a national redress scheme or cooperating with other Australian governments.

It makes the point very clear, however, that “it is by no means clear that a national scheme will eventuate. It appears that the broad support required for a national redress scheme is missing amongst many other Australian governments, particularly from the Commonwealth.”

While some other States have run their own redress schemes, they have been targetted in their scope. For example, the former redress scheme in Western Australia was set up to provide redress to survivors of abuse and neglect in state care.The Victorian Government’s paper, the strongest indication yet that a redress scheme will be established for Victoria, has set the bar for the Commonwealth and other states and territories.

In the paper the Victorian Government says it has “a unique opportunity to respond to the diverse needs and experiences of a wider group of survivors than has been done in other Australian jurisdiction”.

As I’ve said before, the public hearings in this Royal Commission paint a picture of an inconsistent approach to compensation, inadequate payments and a lack of transparency about process and outcomes.

Now is the time for all governments, all institutions and all people of good will to get behind a nationally consistent redress scheme for survivors of child sexual abuse, as an essential first step towards ensuring justice for victims and survivors. 

 
Jehova's Witnesses, ALP Conference and national redress scheme
Francis Sullivan
5 August 2015

The latest Royal Commission hearing which started last week into the Jehovah’s Witnesses Church heard evidence that child sexual abuse survivors have received no redress from their Church community.

While almost 60 people have contacted the Commission regarding allegations of child sexual abuse in the Jehova’s Witnesses Church in Australia, the Commission heard that no redress claims have been made in relation to child sexual abuse concerning that Church.

It also heard that not one of 1006 cases of child abuse allegations recorded in Jehovah's Witnesses Australia documents since 1950 was reported to police.

The Commission heard that in the case of child abusers, the Book of Deuteronomy rule about needing two witnesses to a wrongdoing is applied and that this had effectively meant it is highly unlikely that claims against an abuser within Jehovah's Witnesses could be proved.

This is just one way that different churches and other institutions make it difficult for child sexual abuse survivors to seek justice and redress. 

I mention the Jehovah’s Witnesses not to single it out but to highlight the pressing need for a national, independent child sexual abuse redress scheme.

A national scheme is something abuse survivors are calling for and something that will obviously address the clear problem of institutions investigating themselves and determining how redress should be determined.

It was encouraging that the ALP National Conference last month passed a resolution to act on the recommendations of the Royal Commission, including a redress scheme for victims. 

The resolution binds the ALP to act on the Commission's findings, in consultation with victims, and to report annually to the parliament on the implementation of the recommendations.

While the resolution is pleasing, it appears there might be an ‘out’ for Labor when one of the delegates speaking on the motion said the recommendations would not necessarily be implemented in their entirety, but "in their spirit". 

If Labor does regain government at next year’s election then the idea of implementing recommendations ‘in spirt’ might not provide the level of confidence survivors of child sexual abuse need.

Earlier this year it was reported that Prime Minister Tony Abbott promised a “strong and comprehensive” response to whatever the Royal Commission proposes by way of compensation for abuse survivors.

Labor, the Coalition and the Greens, and State and Territory Governments need to come out now and say they will fully back in the Commission’s recommendations, particularly on redress.

There can be no ‘ifs or buts’ about this.

Almost two years of public hearings have demonstrated that institutions, left to their own devices are, for the most part, incapable of providing redress to abuse survivors. This role needs to be taken away from all institutions and vested with a national independent scheme or left to mediation or the courts, depending on the wishes of the abuse survivor.

Within weeks Commissioner McClellan is due to deliver to Government his recommendations on redress and reforms to the way in which cases of child sexual abuse should be dealt with through the legal system.

This will be a very significant milestone in the course of the Commission’s work and goes to the very heart of why it was created.

Federal, State and Territory Governments must get their act together and agree to the Commission’s recommendations on redress at the very least. Anything less will be a slap in the face for survivors and an unconscionable waste of money.

And despite the Commission pushing forward with its valuable private hearings and policy development, if an effective, generous and independent redress scheme does not emerge from the Commission’s process then survivors and the broader community could rightly see the past three years as nothing more than ‘sound and fury, signifying nothing’.

Inaccurate Victorian Police report on CSA suicides amplifies survivors’ trauma
Francis Sullivan 
29 July 2015

There is no question the Royal Commission has highlighted and uncovered the appalling extent to which child sex abuse has been a caustic evil in so many different organisations across Australia.

This week the Commission started its 29^th public hearing. It is looking at the Jehovah Witnesses Church and so far the evidence tells a disturbingly familiar story – children not believed, institutional cover-up, reputation ahead of protection.

Since early last year the Royal Commission has held public hearings looking at Government based health care providers, State Government homes, facilities run by the Anglican Church, high profile private schools, Jewish organisations, the Salvation Army, Swimming Australia, The YMCA, the Scouts and many institutions within the Catholic Church.

While I cannot speak for any other organisations it seems most have approached these hearings cooperatively and with a willingness to provide assistance where they can.

This has certainly been the case with the Catholic dioceses and congregations which the Truth Justice and Healing Council has represented before the Commission.

What we saw last week however with the exposure in The Australian newspaper that the widely reported Victorian Police investigation into suicides connected to child sexual abuse within the Catholic Church is, at best, factually wrong is a major concern.

The Victorian Police report has now, according to The Australian, been largely discredited by its own internal review. In an editorial this week The Australian says:

‘After claiming 43 church-related suicides had taken place, police now concede the real figure was one suicide in which church-related sex abuse was a contributing factor.’

The editorial says victims of child sexual abuse who have ‘fought a long, painful battle for justice’ have had their cause ‘set back by the incompetence of, and shameful distortions by, Victoria Police.’

The Police report, in its original form, has often been at the centre of many stories condemning the Church. Significantly, The Australian refers to it as being central to the establishment of the Victorian Parliamentary inquiry.

Make no mistake; there is no doubt in my mind that there are many cases of suicide connected with child sex abuse perpetrated by Catholic brothers, priests and others. I have spoken with too many survivors and heard too many stories to question this.

But if anything is to come from the Royal Commission and the other investigations over the past few years into child sexual abuse we need to know the truth, we need to know the facts.

There is more than enough information in the public arena and being revealed at the many public hearings to understand that the Church and other institutions have failed children for many years in the most appalling ways.

The false claims by the Victorian Police should in no way give succor to the leaders of Church organisations that have been the focus of Commission hearings.

But when a report such as this Victorian Police report is found to be, at best misleading, then it reinforces in the minds of some that these investigations are designed simply as ‘get the Catholics’ exercises.

This is not the case and it serves no one any good, lest of all the survivors of child sex abuse, for it to be given any support by discredited evidence and reports.

The Royal Commission processes and all that surrounds it are traumatic enough for survivors without false and misleading claims dressed up as official reports inaccurately amplifying the horrors.

Thirty years of child sexual abuse reporting from National Catholic Reporter
Francis Sullivan
July 16, 2015

In the editorial that is part of this week’s series of stories in the National Catholic Reporter (NCR) on child sexual abuse readers are painted a thumb nail picture of how it was dealt with for many years by Church leaders in the USA.

This is how the NCR said it went: If a serious crime of sexual abuse is committed, firstly conceal it; if an accuser comes forward, deny and condemn them; if they persist, offer to pay for their silence; if that fails, hire the best lawyers available; as a last resort try to settle and apologize to anyone who may have been hurt.

The editorial describes this scenario as “unthinkable”, but “descriptive of the very behavior that Catholics have witnessed among their leaders, with slight variations, for the past 30 years.”

The stories in the NCR this week, which we link to in this edition of our newsletter, are from reporters, advocates and commentators who have covered the abuse in the US Church for years, who have quite reasonably posed the question “what did leaders know and when did they know it?"

There is a piece from a priest who argues that survivors of clerical sexual abuse have forced a rewrite of the Church’s history and forced a change in the way it operates and a story from a survivor-advocate about the struggle to be heard.

For more than 30 years the National Catholic Reporter in the US has been reporting on child sexual abuse both within the US church and more broadly across the Catholic Church world-wide.

The author says “this highly toxic dimension of the institutional church and its clerical subculture has been exposed in country after country on every continent”.

Over the decades progress has been made, particularly with reforms and accountability introduced recently by Pope Francis and some of the earlier protocols developed here which opened up a pathway for survivors to connect with the Church and seek justice.

Not everything has worked, many survivors still feel the same disconnect and antagonism which is part of the history of child sexual abuse here, in the US and many other countries.

In Australia the Church has a unique opportunity. The Royal Commission is driving change. Not just in the Catholic Church but across the community.

We should embrace this opportunity to establish the Church as a credible organisation willing to acknowledge failings, accept criticism, and put in place reforms and move forward.

Of course this is a challenging process and one that requires a determination and resolve born of a commitment to justice and those who have been abused. Our history demands nothing less for us. 

Perth safeguarding measures and Christian Brothers revisit claims
Francis Sullivan
July 8, 2015

This week I have been in Perth where the local Archbishop, Timothy Costello, continues to be at the very front of the push to ensure children within his community are safe and that the Church is doing all it can to put in place best practise child protection policies and procedures.

This weekend, in the latest of a series of announcements, he launched a new child safeguarding program that will see at least two trained safeguarding officers in each of the Archdiocese’s 105 parishes.

They will be the first port of call within the parish for anyone with concerns about child protection and the possibility of abuse. 

The project is designed to educate parents, church personnel and members of the clergy. It will also be used to instruct young children about sexual abuse and its prevention.

This is all about working to ensure children are safe and that the opportunity for sexual abuse to occur is reduced. 

In announcing the project Archbishop Costello said he believed there will be some very specific recommendations coming from the Commission. “But while we wait for these, we shouldn’t just sit back and do nothing. Children need to be protected today. 

“The Safeguarding Project is at the heart of our determination to make sure the present and the future are completely different from the past,” he said.

I spoke briefly to ABC radio in Perth while I was there.

The Christian Brothers also this week released their latest update on settlement of cases they have revisited following the Royal Commission hearing last year into orphanages and farm schools the Brothers ran during the second half of last century.

It is reassuring to see the Brothers are working hard to fulfil their commitment to the Commission to re-examine cases with former residents that have been settled on unjust and unreasonably low terms.

In the report released on Monday the Brothers indicate they have now reopened and finalised around half of the 130 cases which former residents of the farms asked to be looked at afresh. 

Importantly the new settlements have been negotiated through mediation with former residents being assisted by legal advisors. 

What we are seeing in Perth and with the Christian Brothers are Church institutions actively getting on with the job of instigating new policies, putting in place protections and not sitting on their hands waiting for reform to be thrust upon it. 

Last weekend Commissioner McClellan gave a speech to the Care Leavers Australia Network.

In it he revealed that at least one third of the Commission’s private sessions, and at least 37% of the allegations it had received relate to Catholic institutions.

He said the Commission would “be remiss if we did not attempt to understand whether there were particular characteristics within the Catholic Church, including the selection, training and management of priests, which increased the likelihood that ordained members of the Church would become abusers of children. 

“If we are to provide a satisfactory answer to the ‘why’ question we have to be able to understand the characteristics of offenders and any short comings in their personality, training and management which contributed to their abusing young children.” 

This is at the very heart of the Commission’s work, understanding why. And the stark reality is that within the Catholic Church, where so much of the Commission’s work is emanating, we all need to understand that this process, this Royal Commission, is essential and absolutely necessary. 

And at the end of this process we all need to be able to say and demonstrate, that in whatever way we are involved with the Commission, whether directly or indirectly, we have cooperated fully, we have contributed to a better understanding of what happened in the past and we are now working to ensure the abuse and flawed response never happens again.

Fairbridge class action, PIC report, and the absolute need for national redress
Francis Sullivan
July 2, 2015

The resolution of a class action by around 150 former residents of the Fairbridge Farm School in regional NSW was a great win for survivors of child sexual abuse and a continuing reminder of the extraordinary hurdles they face when they go to court.

The $24 million award to the claimants came after a six-year legal battle, 21 court hearings and 50,000 pages of historical documents. Many of the legal and delay tactics are familiar to survivors in the Catholic Church who have tried to take similar claims to Court.

The lawyer for the former residents said eight people who had originally been part of the claim had died before this week’s announcement.

The Fairbridge Farm School is similar to the agriculture schools and orphanages run by the Christian Brothers in WA which were the subject of a Royal Commission public hearing at the end of last year.

The young children, many unattached migrants from the UK, endured sexual and physical abuse. They were beaten, forced to work in slave-like conditions and the ones who did speak up were not believed and punished further.

The lawyer for the former residents, Roop Sandhu, said of the time in court, not a single day was spent debating abuse.

“The Fairbridge class action did not go to trial. Litigation was concerned with technical legal arguments – raised by the defendants – about whether the case should proceed as a class action or proceed at all given the limitation period,” he said.

While this is a great win, it once again highlights the clear and immediate need for a national, generous, independent redress scheme.

Abuse survivors should have a viable alternative to going through the long, drawn-out, painful and confronting court process these people endured. Abuse survivors need to be able to access redress quickly, with limited cost and involvement of lawyers and expect a fair and generous outcome.

This is not just the Catholic Church’s view; it is shared by many survivor groups, advocates for the Fairbridge kids and some lawyers including Vivian Waller who spoke to Fran Kelly about the Fairbridge result on Radio National breakfast this week.

Another compelling argument for the national redress scheme has also solidified over the past week with the release recently of the NSW Police Integrity report into the ‘blind reporting’ of historic child sex abuse to the police. I spoke about this last week.

What is now clear following this report is that if an abuse survivor wants to bring an historic claim of child sexual abuse to Towards Healing, some other part of the Catholic Church or any other organisation in NSW, regardless of their wish to remain anonymous, all the details of the abuse must go to the Police including their name.

This differs slightly from the current practice in some parts of the Church in NSW where all information, other than the survivor’s name, is provided to the police, including the name of the perpetrator and any other details.

We know this is a problem for some survivors, who have never revealed the abuse to their families or others and want it to remain that way. Closing down ‘blind reporting’ may have the unwanted impact of stopping survivors coming forward. Obviously, this would be a bad development.

A national redress scheme, however, will achieve another avenue for survivors looking for redress.

Given a new redress scheme will be built from the ground up with its primary concern focused sharply on survivors, it will hopefully be able to put in place some sort of mechanism which protects their privacy while at the same time being able to meet all the legal requirements of reporting to the police.

Depending on the structure of the scheme it will hopefully provide the redress they are seeking, the ongoing counselling and other support, an acknowledgement of the abuse and an apology, within the privacy of a national independent redress scheme.

The survivors of Fairbridge waited a generation for people to listen to them, to believe them and to have their abuse acknowledged – as have many abuse survivors within the Catholic Church.

Child abuse claims should not be bitterly contested in courts for years, while survivors die, loose their homes and families, struggle to make a living and a contribution to society and, in many cases, ultimately receive very little, if anything at all.

Doing the maths on the Fairbridge award, it is unlikely that of the 150 people involved they will receive, on average, any more than $150,000 each after legal costs are paid.

This, presumably by coincidence, is the mid-point in the range suggested by the Royal Commission as a cap on redress in a national scheme.

I’m sure if these survivors could have gone to a national redress scheme rather than spending six years going back and forward to court then they would have come away feeling like the system was on their side rather than trying to break them down.

CRA National Assembly, Police Reporting
Francis Sullivan
June 25, 2015

Police Integrity Commission report into ‘blind reporting’

Late last week the NSW Police Integrity Commission (PIC) released its report into the involvement of NSW Police with the Catholic Church’s Professional Standards Resource Group (PSRG) and Professional Standards Office (PSO) in NSW and what is known as ‘blind reporting’ of historic child sexual abuse allegations.

The investigation followed three stories on Lateline in mid-2013 in which it was claimed the Church in NSW ‘had tried to strike a secret agreement with the NSW Police to allow it to withhold information about paedophile priests’.

Blind reporting is a practise unique to NSW of reporting an allegation of sexual abuse to the police without identifying the victim. All other information, including the name of the perpetrator, is provided.

A blind report is only made when the adult survivor who has come to the Church has specifically said they do not want the report taken to the police.

Although under the Church’s Towards Healing and Melbourne Response adult survivors are encouraged to make a report to the police, it is a fact that for various reasons, survivors often do not want the police involved.  That said, there is a clear difference between complying with the wishes of survivors, and entering into some illegal arrangement permitting the withholding of information from the police in general.

The Lateline stories were detailed and confronting and I did a long interview with Tony Jones at the time in which I said the claims needed to be investigated and we would fully cooperate.

Following the stories the TJHC started collecting information, including an FOI search within all state Police Forces and other agencies, to see if we could find anything that indicated a formal agreement had been made to hide information, in NSW or elsewhere.  Nothing came to light. All the information we collected was provided to the Royal Commission.

Almost two years to the day since the first Lateline story, the 260 page PIC report found there was no formal agreement to withhold information: in fact it noted that NSW PSO would always co-operate when police requested information.  It also found the Catholic Church had not received any unique preferential treatment and that blind reports of sexual assaults from other Churches were also accepted by the Police.

The PIC has expressed the view however that blind reporting is in breach of the NSW Crimes Act and blind reports should not have been accepted by the NSW police.

The PIC findings mean that there is an issue now for any organisation in NSW, church or otherwise, as to what it should do when it becomes aware of an allegation of sexual abuse but the adult survivor making the claim does not want the police involved.

On the face of the PIC report it seems that in NSW, regardless of the wishes of the abuse victim, the identity of the survivor must be reported immediately, along with the details of the abuse and the identity of the perpetrator, which has always been reported.

Let’s just hope it doesn’t stop victims coming forward.

CRA National Assembly

This week I was lucky to arrive a bit early to address the National Assembly of Catholic Religious Australia in Brisbane.

It was interesting to hear US Josephite sister, Dr Carol Zinn speak about the challenges facing religious life and religious leaders, one of which was to remain close to people on the margins, people who struggle and people who have been disadvantaged in the Church. I know this resonated with leaders in the room on Wednesday as our later discussion turned to issues of healing and pastoral support for victims of child sex abuse. Everyone was acutely aware that the Church’s resources and experience in pastoral and spiritual healing need to be brought to bear on this issue.

This dovetailed into the presentation by Sr Annette Cunliffe, co-Executive Officer at the National Committee for Professional Standards.

Sr Annette talked about the impact of the Royal Commission on the work of the NCPS. In relation to the Council’s consultations on a new overarching national child protection body in the Catholic Church, she called for a working party to develop the standards that would be monitored by the new body currently under consideration. She said there was more awareness and professionalism in the Church than there was three years ago and she encouraged congregations to maintain their focus on the wellbeing of children.  She encouraged each congregation to establish a dedicated role that deals with issues around the protection of children and vulnerable people.

The Council is looking forward to handing over its recommendations later this year for action by the Church leadership. At the end of the day we can consult and provide advice but it’s up to the bishops and religious leaders to take this forward. I’m not sure yet what the new entity will look like or how it will be rolled out, but one thing is clear, the status quo is not an option.

Can credibility ever be rebuilt?
Francis Sullivan
June 17, 2015

Late last week the St Mary’s Cathedral Parish in Hobart put on an information evening attended by about 50 people. It was one of the many talks I do around Australia – simply to talk to ordinary Catholics about what the Council is doing, why we’re doing it, what we can expect from the whole Royal Commission process. 

It doesn’t matter if five people or 200 attend – you can hear a pin drop. People are intensely interested. They feel it deeply. The questions I’m asked are deep and insightful. Some people are angry, others are confused, others are really disappointed. Others are still wondering how this could have happened in the Catholic Church. 

And while no one in these rooms have their fingerprints on the past, all seem to be prepared to accept part of the collective shame associated with child sexual abuse in the Catholic Church.  Just as importantly there seems to be a strong willingness to take some responsibility for ensuring the future is better, that all the issues are dealt with openly and honestly and that action is taken. 

One of the questions I am always asked at these Parish meetings is ‘what can we do?’ My response is always two fold. 

First, keep talking about the issues, to each other, to your local priest, to your Bishop. Demand that they are engaged and that as a congregation you are part of the discussion. Insist that you know what is happening locally and what the Church is doing nationally. 

Second, keep your hearts open to survivors, let them know they are welcome in the church if that is what they want, reach out, be inclusive both within the parish and outside. 

The credibility of the Catholic Church around Australia is low. I hear it everywhere. Attendance has fallen dramatically. The relevance of the Catholic Church in every-day life is questioned. 

When you have something as serious as childhood sex abuse, perpetrated by vowed religious and clerics, the hypocrisy cuts deep and it largely drowns out anything said about other issues across the many parts of our communities in which the Church is doing great work: education, health, welfare, social justice.

If we are ever to be heard when we speak about refugees, about the living wage, about the poor and the disadvantaged then we need to have fully disclosed and put in place reforms that deliver justice and compassion for child sexual abuse survivors.

This is what the TJHC is working to achieve.

Letters, A Parish visit, the Pope's announcement, more...
Francis Sullivan
June 11, 2015

I’ve had lots of emails and letters in the past couple of months as the Church hit the spotlight again through the Rockhampton and Ballarat hearings. I appreciate the feedback, the good and the bad. It helps to keep a healthy focus on the survivors, their families and their communities. I am in the process of responding to everyone who has taken the time to write to the Council.

Those letters add to the valuable feedback I get as I travel around talking to schools, parishes and other groups. 

This week I visited the Stella Maris Parish on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland to attend one of the biggest parish meetings to talk about child sexual abuse and the Church to around 200 people on a rainy night in the local church for more than 2 hours. That Parish has been very active in its support of survivors and I have heard from several of those parishioners over the past couple of years. It was instructive to spend time there and to hear the stories from the coalface.

I don’t think I have been to any other parish meeting, and I’ve been to more than 60 where the anger and frustration from ordinary Catholics has come through so clearly. You could almost feel the demand for change and reform in the room. I was asked many questions about what the Church leadership is doing and when the community will start to see changes and acceptance of responsibility for past failings. These are all good questions that deserve good answers.

Also this week Pope Francis put another plank in his reform agenda with the announcement of a new department in the Vatican to ‘judge’ Bishops accused of covering up or not preventing sexual abuse of minors. The new department is being reported as ‘a breakthrough moment on an issue that has plagued the church globally’. Let’s hope it is able to deliver on what is much needed reform and something abuse survivors and many others have been calling for, for a long time.

We are still feeling the shock waves from the Ballarat Royal Commission public hearing with the commentary and the speculation around the appearance of Cardinal Pell in the second part of the hearing later this year still swirling.

Two things regarding the hearing are now clear – The Royal Commission will ask and Cardinal Pell will give evidence at the Ballarat hearing later in the year. As I’ve said before it will be in the Royal Commission hearing room that many of the questions that were left hanging will be answered and that is how it should be.

Ballarat wrap up
Francis Sullivan
June 3, 2015

It’s been a heavy couple of weeks in Ballarat.

The Royal Commission hearing has rightly brought to the surface more evidence of the deep and lasting impact of the terrible crimes committed there against children by clergy in past decades.

It has also exposed, yet again, the inadequate response of the Church to allegations of child sexual abuse from the 1950s.

The Royal Commission heard evidence from convicted paedophile and former priest, Gerald Ridsdale, who is serving a lengthy jail sentence for crimes committed against some of the most vulnerable children in Ballarat and in rural and regional parishes in the Diocese in the 1960s 70s and 80s.

His memory lapses were frustrating and counterproductive. His evidence provided a picture of a man who acted out of self-interest seeking self-gratification with little, if any insight into the impact of his crimes on his victims.

But most shockingly, we heard evidence that the predominant response of the church in previous decades was to protect the reputation of the Church and the offenders without regard to the children who were abused.

The Ballarat hearing raised more questions than it answered.

Some of those questions relate to Cardinal Pell and his time as a priest in Ballarat.

In line with previous commitments, Cardinal Pell will return from Rome to provide evidence when the hearing resumes towards the end of this year.

The question of the Cardinal’s participation in the Ballarat hearing has been the subject of much speculation in recent days, culminating, perhaps in 60 Minutes on Sunday night when Peter Saunders, a member of the Vatican’s Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors called for the Cardinal to step aside in the face of allegations.

Cardinal Pell is a well-known public face of the Catholic Church in Australia – a lightening-rod if you like and a target because of his strong conservative views.

He’s been a muscular defendant of the Church at a number of levels on many issues. He can be gruff, and what he feels personally, we don’t often hear. 

That said, his ‘can-do’ attitude did deliver the Melbourne Response complaints handling system. He has been a strong supporter of our Council’s approach in this Royal Commission.

In his appearances before the Royal Commission so far, Cardinal Pell has apologised, he’s admitted mistakes. He said the way John Ellis was treated was ‘not Christian’.

Now that the Royal Commission has made it clear the Cardinal will be called as a witness, he, like any other others called, will have an opportunity to explain his role as a priest in Ballarat during his time there.

There are questions around what he did and didn’t know, and what he did or didn’t do.

He will have the opportunity to explain all this rather than negotiate the media frenzy that has surrounded this issue.

These are very difficult and frustrating times for survivors, their families, and their communities. And they’re challenging times for the Church as it’s called to account not only here in Australia, but internationally.

The damage of child abuse and the pathology of child sex offenders
Francis Sullivan
May 27, 2015

This week in the Royal Commission’s Ballarat hearing, psychiatrist Carolyn Quadrio gave evidence about the impact of child sex abuse on survivors and also the pathology of child sex abusers.

Professor Quadrio, an Associate Professor at the University of New South Wales and a consultant family psychiatrist, is one of just a few expert witnesses that have given evidence in hearings involving the Church. What she told the Commission was considered, forthright and informative.

She has worked with abusers and the abused for over 30 years. She told the Commission that abuse survivors are prone to various mental health problems, and that the tendency to keep the abuse a secret worsens the psychological damage.

She said childhood abuse affects every aspect of a person's development.

“Children will be affected in terms of their capacity to form relationships, their ability to function at school, their ability to progress in education and their ability to progress in employment. They're often anxious, depressed, they often turn to alcohol or drugs as a way of kind of medicating their distress and so then substance abuse becomes a problem.

Professor Quadrio told the Commission children usually don't make disclosures at the time of the abuse. She said when they do make disclosures they're often not believed. “And not being believed itself is an extremely damaging experience so that kind of compounds the trauma that they've already been subjected to,” she said.

She told the Commission that when a member of the clergy sexually abuses a child it can be even more damaging because young children see a priest or a member of the clergy as someone who's close to God,  “so the sense of betrayal is particularly shattering because it's kind of like not just one bad person but it's… it feels like well maybe God's bad.

She also said the negative response from the family and community can compound the damage enormously.

She told the Commission about 25 per cent of girls and 5 to 15 per cent of boys suffer some sort of abuse in the general community while for children living in institutions about 30 per cent of girls and 20 per cent of boys are abused.

She said while international studies have shown the sexual abuse of children has been higher in Catholic institutions she did not think celibacy drives child abuse, rather that men who have a sexual orientation to children might feel comfortable in the priesthood.

“You know the celibacy vow is not going to bother you if you're not interested in having sex with, you know, with other adults. So they have access, they have authority and they have the cover of a very respected profession.”

Professor Quadrio’s evidence has provided an enormous amount of information to the Commission. In the course of her evidence she touched on many issues that the Church and particularly the Truth Justice and Healing Council will need to explore in greater depth as we move to a more solid understanding of the impact of child sex abuse and the pathology of sex abusers in the Church. 

Taking the Church to Court
Francis Sullivan
May 21, 2015

Over the past week there has been much media coverage and discussion about the ‘Ellis defence’ and whether dioceses and congregations are still using or threatening it to force abuse survivors away from taking their claims to Court.

I have spoken often about the Ellis defence which was at the centre of a Royal Commission public hearing last year and is the subject of a major law reform recommendation the TJHC has made to the Royal Commission with the endorsement of the Church leadership.

Just by way of background, what has become known as the Ellis defence involves a Church relying on the legal proposition that an unincorporated association cannot be sued in its own name because it does not exist as a legal entity.

In the case of John Ellis, who was an altar boy who suffered sexual abuse during the 1970s, when he tried to sue the church over the abuse, the courts rejected the claim, ruling that the Church wasn't a legal entity, and it wasn't liable for abuse committed by a priest.

This has led to the headline grabbing claim ‘the Church can’t be sued’.

The facts are that Church entities can be sued, often are, but what needs to be identified is the correct entity to respond to the proceedings.

This will often require the willingness on the part of the church authority in the frame letting the lawyers for the victim know who to file their claim against.

This is where the TJHC recommendation on reforms of the civil litigation comes in.

Last year, in two submissions to the Royal Commission, we made the recommendation that legislation should be introduced to require any unincorporated institutions such as a dioceses, congregation, sports or swimming clubs being sued for child sexual abuse identify an entity, what’s known as a Proper Defendant, to be sued.

Some congregations and diocese, not all, are on the record, acknowledging the difficulties victims face in in taking a sex abuse claim to Court. Some are also on the record supporting the policy position that a victim of child sexual abuse by a Church official ought to be able to bring a claim against the Church. The Archdioceses of Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane included.

When we made our recommendation on a proper defendant we also said legislation should be introduced to ensure all unincorporated associations toe the line. This provides equal opportunity for all survivors of child sexual regardless of who abused them or where it happened.

Ballarat Public Hearing starts on Tuesday
Francis Sullivan
14 May 2015

Tuesday sees the start of a three week scheduled public hearing of the Royal Commission into the child sex abuses scandals within the Catholic Church in the Ballarat Diocese.

For most Catholics this news is met with a sense of dread and shame. For the community of Ballarat and it's surrounds it is bittersweet.

As with all the Royal Commission hearings this one will give people a chance to tell their story and for the wide community to hear a sample of what has occurred reaching back at least into the 1960s.

This is important. It is also unsettling for many as they confront once again the horror of the reality that Catholic Church personnel not only abused children but didn't do enough to bring people to justice and also to stop perpetrators abusing time and time again!

Many observers have commented that the community of Ballarat is very fragile and still angry about the child sex abuse scandal. Why wouldn't it be. The loss of trust in the Church and the sense of betrayal runs deep. So too does the cynicism about where the Church is going to repair the damage.

There are no magic solutions for Church leaders. Even though Bishops Connors and Bird have done a lot of practical things to address concerns of victims still more is required.

All Church leaders need to demonstrate that they are willing and able to place Church services under stricter standards of protection for children and vulnerable people. They need to demonstrate that future redress needs to be independently determined. They also need to show in practical ways that the Church has a pastoral commitment to victims for as long as it takes, even if that means for life!

I am not looking forward to the next three weeks as once again the re-telling of the trauma from survivors brings with it the heavy realities of crimes perpetrated on defenceless children.

But I know one thing for sure, I will once again be witness to a bravery and a resolve on the part of those survivors which speaks of a moral courage that was so lacking from those who should have known better back in the day when the image of the Church was protected rather than the rights of the victims.

PS if you don't know, we try to post a brief summary of each day's hearings on our website.

This is our attempt to bear witness to the stories of abuse and to keep people informed about the general issues covered each day.

You can read these updates, along with other material on the hearing including witness statements and transcripts at:

/royal-commission/case-study-28,-ballarat,-may-2015,.aspx

The ripples of suffering and the Ballarat RC hearing
Francis Sullivan
8 May 2015

In the last few weeks I have been delivering talks and meeting with many different people in parishes and other settings up and down the east coast.

Everywhere I go the horror of sexual abuse of children leaves people dumbfounded that such a scandal not only occurred but that otherwise good people often did little to prevent it occurring.

At these occasions people often come up to chat after the presentation. They want to talk privately about their experiences or let me know that they are struggling to be heard by ‘the powers that be’.  Many times it relates to the slowness of the Church’s response or to the sense that Church officials still don’t get the full impact of this scandal.

When I started working in this area experienced people told me the impact of sexual abuse is far reaching. They were referring to the vicarious trauma felt beyond the victim by their families, friends and support people. Often those caring for victims and walking with them in their journey to survive are likewise victims of the abuse. The ripples in the pond go very wide.

It is this devastation that haunts the lives of so many people. It has its own pathology. Often support people suffer in silence and go without recognition. Too few are acknowledged for the vital role they have played in bringing a degree of health and equilibrium to the lives of those who were directly abused. I hope the Royal Commission does not forget them when it comes time to make recommendations on who can access redress systems.

At these same events I have encountered other victims of this scandal who also suffer in silence. Partly they remain quiet out of fear of being disrespectful to those who were abused. These are the families of people who have been wrongly accused or who were the subject of mistaken identity. I too feel hesitant in raising this because some people may think that I am trying to shift the attention away from the victims of abuse. But I am not. I simply want to acknowledge the toxic impacts the abuse scandal has wrought on our community.

Some reputations have been wrongly damaged and some families devastated when accusations have been falsely or mistakenly made. This brings its own misery and suffering and in the interests of getting all the truth out this too needs to be heard.

On a related matter I recently read a draft paper on the devastation abuse brings to a person’s sense of spirituality, particularly within a religious context. Having an appreciation of how an individual’s sense of God, truth and beauty can be utterly shattered when religious personnel have perpetrated abuse on an unsuspecting child is yet again a shameful legacy that too many people suffer.

If we are to take seriously a resolve to heal individuals and the community of the wounds of abuse, we need to address all those who are hurt and all the circumstances they are in.

The Royal Commission this week released its official announcement about the Ballarat hearing which will start on Tuesday 19 May and is expected to last up to three weeks. The community of Ballarat will hear from survivors, from at least one perpetrator and from others in the community.

This will be a sorry and sad time for so many people in Ballarat, for survivors, for their families friends and supporters, for Catholics and for the broader community.

During this time and beyond we all need to do what we can to support each other, to support survivors and their supporters, to support our school communities and teachers, sisters and brothers, clergy and parishioners.

I expect many people will need or be looking for help in many different ways as the hearing unfolds.  On both our website and the Commission’s website are lists and contact details for the many services that can help.

Ballarat hearing, coming up and redress
Francis Sullivan
29 April 2015

The Rockhampton hearing into St Joseph’s Orphanage in Neerkol finished last week and in the next month or so we will begin the public hearing into child abuse that occurred in and around Ballarat in Victoria in the decades up to the 1990s.

The hearing isn’t looking exclusively at abuse within the Catholic Church but evidence from survivors of abuse within local Church institutions will be difficult and challenging. Our thoughts are again with the people who will stand up and tell their stories.

As part of the preparations for the hearing we will visit the Diocese of Ballarat this week to talk to priests and parish leaders and key diocesan personnel about the work of the Royal Commission and what to expect in the weeks ahead. The hearing has been scheduled for three weeks with a possible further hearing later in the year.

As the hearings continue, the Royal Commission is releasing its policy and research work. The Council is in the process of summarising those papers. You can see summaries to date on the TJHC website. 

An important part of our work is to ensure the community is aware of the work of the Royal Commission and of the Truth Justice and Healing Council.

This week I will be at the general meeting of the Principals’ Association of Victorian Catholic Secondary Schools in Melbourne to talk about the work of the Royal Commission and the Council. I’ll also speak at a parish forum at St Marks in Drummoyne in Sydney.

And this weekend I’ve been invited to a national meeting of the Catholic School Parents Association in Sydney where we will discuss the reform options currently being considered by the Council, particularly about the need for an independent national body to set and report on standards in the Catholic Church.

In June or July the Commission will release its final report and recommendations on redress for the survivors of child sexual abuse.

As I’ve said before, this work is at the very heart of the Royal Commission process. At every hearing we have been involved in we have heard survivors give evidence about how they have been treated when they have approached the Church looking for redress.

And while we have worked hard for almost twenty years using both Towards Healing and the Melbourne Response as mechanisms to deliver redress we, along with the rest of the community, are at a cross road.

The Commission’s preferred option is for an independent, national redress scheme administered by the Commonwealth Government which every survivor regardless of where, when or who they were abused by can access.

It is a scheme that will deliver fair, consistent and compassionate redress paid for by the institution responsible for the abuse. It has been endorsed by many church and secular institutions, by survivors and their advocates and by some, certainly not all, governments.

In its submission to the Commission, the Commonwealth has dismissed such a scheme as too complex, expensive and impractical.

The Council will continue to exert pressure and promote the benefits of a national redress scheme and try to get all governments fully engaged in working towards a national redress framework in which government and non-government institutions alike will take part.

Rockhampton Hearing, Redress
24 April 2015

The Rockhampton hearing into St Joseph’s Orphanage in Neerkol finished this week. It was a tragic and miserable week and a half where survivors from the Orphanage told shocking stories of abuse and betrayal.

A glimmer of hope and encouragement came on the last day when the current leader of the Sisters of Mercy, Berneice Loch and a former leader, Di-Anne Rowan gave evidence about how the Sisters work with the survivors now.

As with so many of these public hearings it is so clear about the absolute necessity for all institutions which provide care for children to keep the safety and dignity of children front and centre and to listen to the voices of the children in their care.

Just as importantly, this hearing has shown how easy it is to disbelieve the stories of abuse and in turn the tragedy that was unfolding under the governance of the Church.

History has been a harsh teacher, and vulnerable children have paid a high price as the church and other institutions slowly get their act together.

Listening this week to evidence from a former Rockhampton bishop and Sisters of Mercy, and from Queensland government officials, it is quite shocking to realise just how ill-informed people in positions of authority were about the risks to children and how ill prepared they were to believe allegations, let alone to put in place measures to protect vulnerable children and provide meaningful support.

Former Bishop of Rockhampton, Brian Heenan, acknowledged the inadequacy of his response to allegations of abuse when he said outside the hearing:

“I apologise again for the harm and suffering of former St Joseph’s Orphanage residents at the hands of the Catholic Church clerics, sisters and staff.

I also apologies again for the way in which I responded to these victims. I failed them and for that I will be forever sorry. 

As heartfelt as those words are, they may help with the healing for some survivors, but they cannot undo the terrible crimes committed against vulnerable children.

As I’ve said many times we need action.

The TJHC is currently working on setting up an independent body that will set and publicly report on standards that affect children and vulnerable people in Catholic schools, parishes and welfare services in Australia. It will provide a nationally consistent, accountable and transparent approach to the safety of children within Church organisations.

At the same time, the Council is pushing for a national redress scheme that will provide a more just and consistent approach to compensation for all survivors of sexual abuse in Australian institutions.

The country needs an independent umpire to investigate, determine what happened, determine what should be paid and then demand the institution responsible for the abuse pay the compensation. Importantly there is nothing in this proposal that would see one cent of tax payer money paying for abuse that occurred in the Catholic Church.

The Commonwealth Government says it’s too complex, too time consuming, too costly. Read its submission here, it won’t take you long, it’s only two and a bit pages.

It’s breathtaking that the Federal Government, which established and significantly extended this Royal Commission, should dismiss so quickly the first real recommendation from the Commission.

Our political leaders, for the most part have been silent. That has to change.

St Jospeh's Orphanage Neerkol
Diocese of Rockhampton, Institute of the Sisters of Mercy
Francis Sullivan
16 April 2015

This week’s hearing in Rockhampton into an orphanage has been a tragic and sorry story of abuse suffered by some of the youngest children in some of the worst circumstances you can imagine.

It is clear that the former residents who have given evidence this week were the victims of very harsh conditions and physical, emotional and sexual abuse.

What we know is that the Church was initially very slow to react to complaints when they were first made. In time, the church authorities took a different approach and despite being able to legally knock out the claims, they went ahead and settled with more than 80, ultimately paying out more than $1.1million to former residents.

The Sisters sold the Neerkol property in order to pay their share of the legal settlement and continued support of the survivors. They have always acknowledged their ongoing ministry of care for Neerkol residents.

The Sisters of Mercy and the Diocese of Rockhampton have both acknowledged and apologised, most recently this week in a joint statement, for the hurt and damage suffered by the survivors and have been providing support to the former residents of Neerkol for many years.

One of the witnesses this week said while the compensation she had received from the Sisters could never repair the damage done to her at Neerkol she felt nuns of today were trying to right what happened in the past.

“I do appreciate the help the sisters have provided to me.  Anne Czekanski, the response coordinator for the Sisters of Mercy, has never turned her back on any ex residents if they have asked for help.  

“I feel that she has gone above and beyond her call of duty and has shown a real care for the former residents of Neerkol.

“While they can't fix everything, they are trying as much as they can to make our lives easier.”

This will be small consolation for many former residents but it does indicate a very real change in the way some people in the church are responding to abuse survivors. 

The strength and resilience we have seen and heard this week from former residents is remarkable.

They are powerful advocates and have been instrumental in securing assistance, redress and justice for all who were abused at Neerkol, from the church authorities, and also from the state government.

Once again the hearing so far has demonstrated just why we need a national independent redress scheme funded by the institutions responsible for the abuse.

Government response to redress breath taking
Francis Sullivan
10 April 2015

Three cheers for the Sydney Morning Herald editorial of 5 April 2015.

The non-negotiable ruling-out by the Commonwealth Government of support for a national redress scheme has been breath taking.

At a time when national leadership is required to address the scourge of child sexual abuse in institutions our Commonwealth Government has left the field! You have to wonder where in the Commonwealth bureaucracy the decision was made to reject the Royal Commission’s options on redress. 

Given the reasons in the Commonwealth’s brief submission, those mainly being based on the administrative load and cost sharing issues between levels of government, it is clear senior leaders of the Government were not engaged with this vital social issue for the nation.

Let’s run through some of the basic considerations that seem to have alluded those charged with submitting the Commonwealth’s response.

Firstly, a proper public policy approach is to adopt a principle of fairness. In this case it seems more than obvious that victims of child sexual abuse should be able to access the same level of redress regardless of when the abuse occurred, where it occurred or from within what institution it occurred. For any even casual observer of the Royal Commission hearings, this is a ‘no brainer’.

Secondly, apart from the Catholic Church, there have been very few organised institutional redress schemes on offer since the late 1990s for victims. I am the first the acknowledge that Towards Healing and the Melbourne Response have worked for some and not for others, but at the very least the schemes were available. Forother victims outside the Church there is precious little to rely on apart from lawyers and the civil litigation system.

Thirdly, governments, at both the Commonwealth, state and territory levels have had responsibility for child services. Unfortunately child sexual abuse has occurred within government controlled institutions. Why should these victims be regarded differently to those from other institutions? Why should victims in government institutions only have access to limited redress schemes, or none at all?

Fourthly, the Commonwealth rightly extended the Royal Commission’s time to cater for the demand on the inquiry. To do otherwise would have been seen as a cynical exercise. Just as cynical is an approach that unilaterally rules out the option of a national redress scheme even before the issue was publicly discussed at the Commission’s formal hearings. So much for respecting the work of the Commission, its measured recommendations and careful considerations!

Many political observers are beginning to question whether difficult social and economic issues can be prosecuted in the current partisan climate that characterises federal politics. In other words, are issues quickly dismissed because they are difficult or they don’t easily play into the strategic narrative one side, or both, of politics choose to tell? Is the notion of a national redress scheme facing the same fate?

Redress Royal Commission hearing, consultations wind-up,
Rockhampton and Lateline
Francis Sullivan
30 March 2015

Royal Commission redress public hearing

This week I gave evidence to the Royal Commission in Sydney on the Church’s redress and civil litigation submission.

I also spent a day and half listening to others including survivor support groups, governments, other institutions such as the YMCA and other churches talk about redress for child abuse survivors.

It was clear both from the submissions I’ve read and what I’ve heard that most support a government-run, independent scheme which determines redress which is then paid by the organisation responsible.

I, along with many others, was disappointed to see the Federal Government, in a very brief two and a half page submission, does not support a national redress scheme, arguing it’s too costly and too complicated to implement.

It’s surprising the Commonwealth, which set up the Royal Commission, has so quickly removed itself from any involvement in the fundamental issue of developing and operating fair and generous redress scheme.

It is surprising and very disappointing, but I’m hopeful when the final decision is made, ideally around the Cabinet table, that wiser and more compassionate heads might prevail and the Commonwealth will accept it has a role and plays its part.

Community Consultation

It’s over 12 months since the Council and the National Committee for Professional Standards drafted the reform discussion paper: Ensuring a Safe Church for Children and Vulnerable People. We’ve now finished our scheduled consultations and I hope to meet with a few more groups in the weeks ahead.

It’s been enormously helpful to hear from people at the coal face, Church leaders and many others about the ideas in the discussion paper.

We heard from more than 300 people who came to forums in Canberra, Adelaide, Perth, Hobart, Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne.

A report on the consultations will be delivered to the Council in early April, and the final draft will go to the Supervisory Group shortly afterwards.

It is hoped the final report, which will include a business plan, will be signed off by the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference and Catholic Religious Australia in November, ready to be rolled-out early in 2016

Rockhampton Royal Commission Hearing

Last week I was in Rockhampton ahead of the Royal Commission hearing which starts mid-April into the St Joseph’s Orphanage, Neerkol.

It was valuable to meet with more than 120 local teachers, principals, priests and others to talk about how the hearing is likely to unfold and what the Catholic and broader community can expect to hear.

Both local Bishop Michael McCarthy and the head of the Mercy Sisters, Bernice Loch said that while the hearing will be extremely difficult for the survivors who will give evidence it is important that they have every opportunity to tell their stories, be listened to and be believed.

Lateline

During an interview with Tony Jones on Lateline this week to talk about our redress proposal I was asked about comments Bishop Bill Wright made in a local Newcastle article.

I said that when Bishop Wright referred to some critics as ’the usual suspects’ that it was not language I would have used and it might be helpful if he explained what he meant.

While I stand by these comments it is important to add Bishop Wright has been a long-time supporter and advocate both within the Church and beyond for changes to the way the Church approaches the issues of child sexual abuse.

He has been a strong supporter of  Zimmerman Services in Newcastle which is used to help local survivors of clerical abuse and I understand the changes he has put in place and the support he has given is broadly supported.

The language we use when we are talking about child sexual abuse is very important. It is sometimes the case that something said can, rightly or wrongly, be interpreted as something else entirely. This has happened to me in the past and it will probably happen again.

Bill Wright is on the Truth Justice and Healing Council and I know for a fact that he is very much part of the solution. Without his active advocacy for reform among his fellow church leaders the work we are doing would be much harder.

As we continue to confront the church’s child sexual abuse history and put in place the changes needed to ensure survivors are treated fairly and compassionately there will be mistakes made and wrong reins pulled.

We need to acknowledge these mistakes, fix them and then continue to do what we know is the right thing.

Redress hearing commences in Sydney next week
Francis Sullivan
18 March 2015

This week the Royal Commission announced it will hold a public hearing, starting next Wednesday in Sydney, into possible redress schemes for survivors of child sexual abuse.

To me, the issue of redress is at the very heart of the Commission’s work and this hearing will be a significant milestone along the path to delivering justice for abuse survivors.

The hearing will see institutions, including the Catholic Church and governments, talk about what they think fair and compassionate redress for survivors of child sexual abuse should look like.

During the hearing we will hopefully hear from all governments, most for the first time, on how they intend to approach redress for survivors abused in government-run homes, orphanages and other institutions.

The Commission’s preferred option, which is broadly in line with the proposal put by the Church last year, is for a single national redress scheme led by Australian Governments funded by the institutions responsible for the abuse.

The scheme would also provide counselling, psychological care and other services, again, paid for by the responsible institutions.

Importantly a scheme like this will ensure all survivors receive redress based on the same criteria and conditions, determined independently using the same set of standards and administered with limited costs and easy access regardless of where, when or who they were abused by.

It would effectively see, for the first time in Australia and perhaps anywhere in the world, consistent, easy access to redress available to all survivors of child sexual abuse.

Royal Commission out-of-home care hearing in Sydney

It has been disturbing listening to the narratives describing the trauma experienced by children over the past two weeks in the Commission’s hearing into out-of-home care. 

Lack of funding, insufficient staff numbers and failures in systems, policies and practices have all seemed to have played a part in the abuse of, according to the Commission, many thousands of children who have been abused in out of home care.

This hearing is an opportunity for the leaders of government and non-government out of home care agencies to gather together and discuss the issues, highlight the problems, and discover best practice for the greatest care of children they look after.

The out-of-home care hearing will conclude this week. Transcripts and updates from the hearing are on our website.

Consultation Forums

We are at the halfway point in our national consultation forums.

So far discussions have been lively and enlightening. Participants, representing various parts of the Church, and in some cases survivors, have talked passionately about their experience and what they believe is needed to make Church institutions safe places for children and vulnerable people.

After the consultation period and collection of information the Council will report to the Supervisory Group on progress and any outstanding issues requiring further considerations.

This week we have two forums in Sydney and next week Brisbane before the final forum in Melbourne.

Archbishop Wilson

This week a charge was laid against the Archbishop of Adelaide, Philip Wilson, relating to the concealment of child sexual abuse information when he was a young priest in the NSW Hunter region in the 1970s.

In a statement Archbishop Wilson has denied the allegations and says he will strenuously defend himself. He has reaffirmed in his statement his commitment to dealing proactively with the issue of child sexual abuse and expressed his deep sorrow for the devastating impact of clerical sex abuse on victims and their families.

Archbishop Wilson appeared in one of our earlier Royal Commission Public Hearings involving the long and at times extremely difficult process of having a priest in the Wollongong diocese laicised.

He, along with current Wollongong Bishop, Peter Ingham, spent the best part of a decade working tirelessly to have John Nestor, who both considered a threat to children, removed from the priesthood.  The final report from the Royal Commission in the Nestor case study reflected positively on the way Archbishop Wilson and Bishop Ingham had worked hard to have Nestor removed from the priesthood.

In the face of the current allegations, Archbishop Wilson has taken leave from his position in Adelaide and has also removed himself from the group of Bishops and religious leaders to whom the Truth Justice and Healing Council makes its recommendations.

The charge against Archbishop Wilson is very serious and is likely to take some time to progress through the courts. It is important he, like anyone else, is afforded the presumption of innocence and given every opportunity to defend himself.

Out-of-home care hearing opens in Sydney this week
Francis Sullivan
13 March 2015 

The Royal Commission’s 24th public hearing began in Sydney this week examining the issue of child sex abuse in out-of-home care. 

When children are placed in out-of-home care it is hoped a new roof over their head will also mean a better life. 

For many, tragically this is not the case with the Royal Commission hearing this week that 40 per cent of the 3000 survivors of child sexual abuse, who have spoken to the Commission during private hearings, were abused in out-of-home care, mostly in the 1950s and 60s. 

This is the Royal Commission’s first policy-focused public hearing, and it is the first time survivors who have been abused will not directly be part of a hearing.

The Royal Commission will instead hear evidence from a range of expert witnesses with experience in the sector. These include representatives from each of the state and territory governments as well as non-government out-of-home care providers.

Catholic organisations, including Mary Mackillop Family Services, Marymead Child and Family Services and CatholicCare Sydney will provide evidence about the successes and improvements that can be made to the way they care for hundreds of children not considered safe in their own families. 

Unlike previous case studies, there will be no findings made following this hearing. Evidence gathered during the hearing will be used by the Royal Commission to formulate an issues paper on out-of home care to be released for response following the hearing. 

I am writing this blog from Perth where I have been participating in the third of our national reform forums. We are meeting with representatives from dioceses and religious orders, schools, health and social services and parishioners, and in some cases, survivors of abuse. We are discussing options to develop a structure that will ensure children and vulnerable people are safe in Church institutions. 

So far the forums have been lively, productive and well attended with 25 participants in Canberra, 40 in Adelaide and 45 in Perth. 

The forums will continue in Tasmania this week.  While there I will also speak at the ‘Pints of Faith’ event organised by the Archdiocese of Hobart at the Hotel Soho. 

Similar to ‘Theology on Tap’ or ‘Spirituality in the Pub’, it's an opportunity to enjoy a meal, meet with locals and talk about the work of the Council and the Royal Commission. Everyone is welcome. 

Following Tasmania we have two forums in Sydney and one in Brisbane before the final forum in Melbourne.

Consultation forums begin in Canberra
Francis Sullivan
5 March 2015

The Truth Justice and Healing Council (TJHC) has just completed the first of eight forums consulting with the Church community on setting up a national standards setting and supervisory body for child protection and safeguards for vulnerable people in Catholic institutions.

The first forum, held in Canberra on Monday, saw 25 people from across the local church community meet to flesh out and discuss ideas on the best ways to deliver better accountability, transparency and consistency as we work to ensure all Church institutions are safe.

The starting point for these discussions has been a consultation paper developed and distributed widely throughout Catholic Church institutions. What the end proposal will look like when it is delivered to the Bishops and Religious Leaders mid-year is very much a work in progress and will be informed by what we hear over the coming month.

If the Canberra forum is anything to go by there are many people with strong views and ideas that will play a significant part in shaping the final recommendations.

By the end of this week we will have been to Adelaide and Perth. We will be in Hobart next week then Sydney the following week and Brisbane and Melbourne by the end of the month.

It was interesting that last weekend, just ahead of the start of our consultation forums, the Irish Church held a major conference hosted by the National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church in Ireland which was established to set child protection standards, audit and report on them across the Irish Church.

Archbishop Eamon Martin, President of the Irish Bishops' Conference who opened the meeting, said the conference provided an opportunity to look back on where the Church in Ireland had come from and to assess its progress.

The conference was grounded on two underlying themes: the legacy of past failure, and the importance of safeguarding as a shared responsibility within the Church. It looked at three important issues in particular: a safeguarding culture; a One-Church approach; and, outreach to survivors.

As we go about consulting on a child protection body for Australia it is important to understand the types of reforms being considered are not unique.

In Europe, the UK, the US and Canada the Catholic Church is working to address the shadow of child sexual abuse with many countries now having independent whole-of-church child protectorate bodies. 

Chair of the Royal Commission, Peter McClellan, has indicated his interest in seeing how institutions are responding to what they are hearing from the Royal Commission.  Our national consultation process demonstrates that the Church is listening and is taking action.

Public hearings

As the forums are being rolled out throughout Australia we will also continue preparations for Royal Commission public hearings in Rockhampton and Ballarat.

On 14^th March a public hearing will be held in Rockhampton focusing on the experiences of children at St Joseph’s Orphanage, Neerkol, and the conduct of priests attached to the Diocese who carried out duties at the orphanage.

The Commission will then travel to Ballarat in May, where it is understood further evidence of institutional sexual abuse, involving the Catholic Church, will be examined.

But before either of these hearings, on Tuesday next week a public hearing in Sydney will look at allegations of child sexual abuse and prevention strategies in out-of-home care.

This hearing isn’t focusing exclusively on the Catholic Church but will gather information from all State Government jurisdictions and around seven other major institutions.

During the hearing al the groups will be asked to outline their experience in the management and safety of children in Out-of-Home Care.

We also continue to develop our response to the Royal Commission’s Redress Paper due to be submitted next week.

With the consultations in full swing and preparations for public hearings underway, we must continue to be directed by the needs of survivors.

Everything we do, every discussion we have, every policy we develop must consider survivors and what is in their best interest. This is our focus and our priority. 

The first step towards national healing
Francis Sullivan
25 February 2015

The tragedy of child sex abuse in Australia has featured prominently in the media over the past week.

Desperate stories of children sexually assaulted in detention centres comes only weeks after the Forgotten Children Report was released by the Human Rights Commission outlining the incidence of sexual abuse in detention centres.

To add to the heartbreak, research by the Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education this week reveals that one in five Australian children have been affected by the drinking of others.

It is important that child sex abuse is widely covered by the media so that we have a full appreciation and understanding of the extent and scale of the problem.  The Royal Commission into the Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse public hearings has certainly drawn attention to the widespread problem within Institutions.

I am concerned that, with so much attention and exposure given to abuse cases, our sensitivity and understanding of the real and immediate needs of survivors may be diminished.

The extent of the problem within our community must drive us to work hand-in-hand with all levels of government, religious groups and other institutions to find practical solutions for survivors so they have the chance to live a rewarding and fulfilled life.

The scope of the Royal Commission does not include the alarming rate of child sex abuse in domestic and community settings. Regardless of this, as a country we must remain fully committed to addressing child sex abuse - wherever and whenever the abuse occurs.

The first opportunity we have to show our commitment to survivors is in our deliberations regarding a national redress scheme for people who have been sexually abused in institutional settings.

This will require an inclusive and cooperative approach from everyone. For too long survivors of child sex abuse have had to rely, either on the good will (or not) of institutions, or the precarious civil litigation system.

It is now time to develop a generous and fair national redress scheme so that, at the very least, survivors of child sex abuse can receive some justice. It is incumbent on everyone working together to agree on a scheme that will provide the best outcomes for survivors.

I know that many survivors hope the redress will go beyond sexual abuse and include, physical, emotional and psychological abuse. The government rejected this proposal by narrowing the Royal Commission’s terms of reference to sexual abuse in institutional settings.

If we can establish a national redress scheme, where survivors recognise that they can receive generous reparations for the tragic events in their life, then we have taken a step in the right direction.

A step that is indicative of our values and an important first step towards national healing.

Fair and Just redress - time for governments to act
Francis Sullivan
18 February 2015

While sharing lunch with around 40 survivors of child abuse at Lotus Place in Brisbane last week I was reminded, and deeply saddened, by the devastating, long-term impact of child abuse.

Lotus Place is a dedicated support service and resource centre for Forgotten Australians and Former Child Migrants. Many of its clients were placed in Australian Catholic institutions in the 40s, 50s and 60s where they were abused and suffered terrible hardship.

The survivors, spoke about childhoods destroyed, relationships ruined and a life littered with pain, frustration and disappointment.

As I listened to their stories and accounts of their daily struggles it became brutally clear that a fair, compassionate and consistent compensation scheme for survivors of child sex abuse is urgently needed.

Many survivors I met are now in their sixties and seventies and they deserve to receive acknowledgement, support and compensation for their pain and suffering. In a quiet moment a survivor told me that even a small amount of financial support for her funeral would be a welcome start.

The Royal Commission last month released its consultation paper on redress schemes for survivors of child sex abuse. It will release its final recommendations mid-year.

The Commission’s preferred option is built on a national scheme run by the Commonwealth in which the investigation of abuse claims and determination of compensation is accessed independently of the accused institution.

When an award is made the institution responsible for the abuse will then be responsible for paying. This scheme would also provide for counselling, psychological care and other services, again, paid for by the responsible institution.

Understandably, the community and survivors do not trust institutions to fairly examine and investigate themselves. The Catholic Church fully acknowledges that the days of the Church investigating itself are over. 

This preferred Royal Commission redress scheme is largely consistent with the Church’s proposal outlined in its submission to the Royal Commission in June last year.

All survivors of child sex abuse deserve an equal opportunity to access redress irrespective of where or when they were abused, or in what institution.

Tragically, a scheme like this will not eventuate without the support of our law makers, both state and federal.

It is now the responsibility of governments to take a stand on behalf of the community and implement an independent redress scheme for all survivors. 

Anything less will not achieve the independence and transparency that survivors deserve and the Commission has called for.

I challenge any government minister or bureaucrat, before making a decision on how they will respond to the Royal Commission’s consultation paper on redress, to spend time with survivors and hear first hand their devastating stories.

There are support services like Lotus Place across the country. 

If just a few of the government decision makers took time out to visit one, then I’m sure many of their concerns about establishing a national compensation scheme would take second place to the need to address the tragedy, pain and suffering of those people living with the impact of child sexual abuse.

Their stories are difficult to hear, but absolutely vital to understand.

From Rhetoric to Action - Pope Francis
Francis Sullivan
11 February 2015

Catholic Church fully supports redress and civil litigatioconsultation paper 
Francis Sullivan
4 February 2015

Putting people first
Francis Sullivan
28 January 2015

Secrecy of child abuse exposed
Francis Sullivan
22 January 2015

Release of the Activity Report
Francis Sullivan
16 December 2014

Working together to develop a national redress scheme
Francis Sullivan
9 December 2014

Establishing an independent body to handle complaints
Francis sullivan
3 December 2014 

Church leaders supporting change 
Francis Sullivan
27 November 2014

Time for the people of the Church
Francis Sullivan
20 November 2014

The Changing Church
Francis Sullivan
13 November 2014

Meeting Catholics across the country
Francis Sullivan
5 November 2014

The issue of child sex abuse increasingly prominent
Francis Sullivan
29 October 2014

Royal Commission ignites action 
Francis Sullivan
22 October 2014

Police Integrity Commission investigates relationship
between the NSW Police and the Church
Francis Sullivan
14 October 2014

The culture of discretion - in conversation with 
Archbishop of Brisbane, Mark Coleridge
Francis Sullivan
8 October 2014

Focusing on what matters; a US perspective 
Francis Sullivan and Dr Kathleen McChesney
2 October 2014 

A Changing Church
Francis Sulivan
22 September 2014

Catholic Communities speak out
Francis Sullivan
14 September 2014

Royal Commission granted two-year extension

Francis Sullivan
4 September 2014 

The Church as Family
Francis Sullivan
28 August 2014 

Melbourne Response Hearing Begins
Francis Sullivan
21 August 2014

A National Victims’ Redress Scheme 

Francis Sullivan
13 August 2014

Local parishes encouraged to reach out

Francis Sullivan
7 August 2014

Reforming the Church
Francis Sullivan
30 July 2014 

Moving into the Future
Francis Sullivan
23 July 2014

Making it Happen
Francis Sullivan
16 July 2014 

Governments and Institutions must act now
Francis Sullivan 
8 July 2014 

Royal Commission tables first Interim Report
Francis Sullivan
2 July 2014

Wollongong hearing begins 
Francis Sullivan
26 June 2014

Working with Children Check
Francis Sullivan
18 June 2014

Marist Brothers Explain the Past
Francis Sullivan
11 June 2014

Challenging Church Traditions
Francis Sullivan
4 June 2014

Marist Brothers at the Royal Commission
Francis Sullivan
28 May 2014

Universally Protecting Children
Francis Sullivan
20 May 2014 

The Church responding to the Royal Commission
Francis Sulivan
13 May 2014 

The Need for a National Compensation Scheme
Francis Sulliivan
7 May 2014 

Perth Hearing begins
Francis Sullivan
29 April 2014

Breaking Down Barriers
Francis Sullivan
14 April 2014

Confidence in the Commission
Francis Sullivan
9 April 2014

Honestly and openly facing the Royal Commission
Francis Sullivan
3 April 2014

Working harder for change
Francis Sullivan
26 March 2014

Is litigation the answer for survivors of child sex abuse?
Francis Sullivan
20 March 2014

Major reform pushes to open Church organisations up to being sued
Francis Sullivan 11 March 2014

John Ellis Case
Francis Sullivan 6 March 2014

 Toowoomba hearing ends in Brisbane
Francis Sullivan 27 February 2014   

Better safety and protection for our children
Francis Sullivan 19 February 2014

Get Involved
Francis Sullivan 11 February 2014

Communicating Life
Francis Sullivan 4 February 2014

2014 A Year for Action
Francis Sullivan 29 January 2014

Taking Notice and Taking Action
Francis Sullivan 23 December 2013

Cogs for Change are Turning
Francis Sullivan 18 December 2013

Towards Healing Under the Spotlight
Francis Sullivan 11 December 2013

The Truth Will Bind Us
Francis Sullivan 3 December 2013

Searching for Justice and Peace in Ballarat
Francis Sullivan 26 November 2013

Momentum for compensation change
Francis Sullivan 21 November 2013

Sharing the Sorrow
Francis Sullivan 12 November 2013

Rescuing the Future
Francis Sullivan 5 November 2013

That was then but the suffering is still now
Francis Sullivan 28 October 2013

A Time for Renewal and Forgiveness
Francis Sullivan 23 October 2013

Understanding the Memorandum
Francis Sullivan 15 October 2013

A new approach
Francis Sullivan 10 October 2013 

The Catholic Church, sexual abuse and a new agenda
Francis Sullivan 3 October 2013

Igniting Humble Leadership
Francis Sullivan 3 October 2013

Healing the wounds
Francis Sullivan 25 September 2013

The bearing of witness
Francis Sullivan 17 September 2013

Picking up the Pieces
Francis Sullivan 11 September 2013

Action and Achievement
Francis Sullivan 4 September 2013

Protecting Children is everyone's business.
Francis Sullivan 3 September 2013

Keeping the Faith
Francis Sullivan 27 August 2013

Taking Sides
Blog by TJH Council Member Maria Harries
20 August 2013

Who is looking after the children
Francis Sullivan 20 August 2013

Towards Healing - from here to there
Francis Sullivan 14 August 2013

The truth can set us free
Francis Sullivan 7 August 2013

Learning from the past for a better future
Francis Sullivan 31 July 2013

Towards a greater healing
Francis Sullivan 24 July 2013

Building Reconcilliation
Francis Sullivan 16 July 2013

We are the Church
Francis Sullivan July 2013

Building Bridges
Francis Sullivan July 2013

Line in the sand
Francis Sullivan June 2013

Not such a gentle silence
Francis Sullivan June 2013

Looking for answers
Francis Sullivan  June 2013

Actions Speak Louder than Words
Francis Sullivan May 2013

Redemptorist Retreat Galong, St Charles Ryde and Catholic Religious Australia
Francis Sullivan May 2013

Cairns and Wollongong 
Francis Sullivan May 2013

Catechists Conference Canberra
Francis Sullivan May 2013

Meetings in WA and the Biannual Bishops Conference
Francis Sullivan May 2013

Meetings in Townsville and introduction to the Website and Blog
Francis Sullivan April 2013