By Ean Higgins
The Australian
August 14, 2007
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,22240070-28737,00.html
Like many victims of child sexual abuse, James Setches kept the horrific memories bottled up inside for decades. But when his brother, the famous jockey Ray Setches, committed suicide eight years ago, he decided to act.
Ray had only told James he had been abused as a boy at a Christian Brothers school in Melbourne.
"People always wondered why such a famous and successful person would kill himself," Setches says. "Sure he lost some money, his relationships broke up, and he suffered depression. But the root cause of all that was the sexual abuse he'd suffered when he was young.
"When I saw him in the coffin, it was almost like he was talking to me, saying, 'James, do something'."
That was the catalyst for a long and now public fight Setches is waging against the Catholic orders whose friars and religious brothers he claims abused him at orphanages and other institutions: the Order of Saint Francis of Assisi, and the Christian Brothers.
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| James Setches protests outside St Francis of Assisi Picture: Lisa Williams |
Setches left his home in Perth to go to Sydney, where he is living in a hostel, to mount what he says will be increasingly spectacular protests. On Sunday, he was protesting at the Franciscan church in Sydney's Paddington, handing out pamphlets about his cause and talking to anyone who would listen.
While he has received a total of $41,000 from the two orders, Setches believes this is not enough to compensate for a life he says has been ruined by sexual abuse. He is seeking another $160,000.
He has had a marriage break up, has worked in odd jobs ranging from acting to chauffeuring, and been in and out of psychiatric institutions for depression.
Setches, 61, says he was emotionally weak when he accepted an initial payout from the two orders, and signed a release agreeing to make no further claims. He did make further claims - each time receiving sums between $5,000 and $10,000.
But now the Brothers and the Franciscans have drawn the line: they commissioned a retired ombudsman to review his case and concluded that Setches has received enough.
"Like any allegation that comes forward, it is taken very seriously," says Stephen Bliss, the provincial head of the Franciscans in Australia. "We have followed all the protocols for the Catholic Church. You can review the review of the review, but somewhere along the line there has to be finality."
Setches says his fight is not against Catholicism - he remains a believer and church goer. Rather, it is against the orders he claims still do not fully accept responsibility for past child sexual abuse in their ranks.
"It's all about protecting their assets and limiting their liability; compassion does not come into it at all," Setches says.
He is not alone in his criticism. The protocols Bliss speaks of are known as Towards Healing, a process launched by the Catholic Church in 1996 to deal with a flood of claims of past sexual abuse.
Towards Healing was supposed to be a recognition by the church of the problem and a protocol for negotiating a settlement away from the courts that may involve financial restitution, but also counselling and other measures.
But Towards Healing's critics say it exists to contain the church's financial exposure.
The average payout - which always involves a release from making further claims - is about $35,000, while court settlements can yield up to 10 times that amount.
Payouts from court settlements for serious sexual abuse are in the order of $200,000 to $300,000 and can occasionally be higher, lawyers say.
One of Towards Healing's critics is Jason Parkinson, the principal of Canberra firm Porters Lawyers, who has mounted a number of successful court actions against the Catholic Church on behalf of clients who were sexually abused.
Parkinson says there is a place for Towards Healing to handle cases so old it would be difficult if not impossible to put them before the courts. But he says Towards Healing yields poor outcomes for people who have been seriously abused, who have good cases and have suffered ongoing financial problems.
"A common symptom of those people who have been abused is that they cannot deal with conflict," Parkinson says. "If you get them in a room without a lawyer they cannot defend themselves from being dealt with robustly by the Catholic Church. They end up being cornered and getting sums of money that are vastly inferior to going to court.
"There is also a fear that the Church wants to deal with these matters in secret, enabling it to hide its dirty laundry."
Theoretically, victims who go through the Towards Healing process are supposed to have access to a lawyer paid for by the church. But there was no lawyer around when the Bishop of Canberra, Patrick Power, showed up unannounced at one woman's house one night and tried to persuade her to go to Towards Healing rather than hire a lawyer.
The woman claims she was sexually abused as a girl by parish priest and notorious pedophile Patrick Cusack, who was attached to a Catholic school in Canberra.
She initially went through Towards Healing, with a young civil advocate as her adviser. Towards the end of the negotiations, the church was represented by Power.
Power offered $40,000, and the meeting broke up with the woman saying she would probably accept. She was sent a written agreement and release.
"It was when I read the line in the agreement saying, 'I have sought legal advice' that I hesitated, because I hadn't," she says.
The woman went to Parkinson, who advised that $40,000 was far less than she would get in court. She received a second opinion from two lawyers from the Women's Legal Centre.
"They were of the view that the amount of money the church was offering was almost insulting," the woman says.
Parkinson took her case, and sent a letter to the Catholic Church. When Power read the letter, he went to the woman's house to try to talk her out of going with Parkinson.
"He said that I couldn't get a solicitor because it had all been settled," the woman says. "He was basically trying to frighten me." Power rang two days later to encourage the woman to sign the Towards Healing deal.
Power denies he tried to frighten the woman and says he simply knocked on her door and asked if he could speak with her. "My concern was that she was going to pay out part of any settlement for the lawyers, and that if she went down that route she'd end up with less of the money in her own pocket," Power says.
Power claims Parkinson got $80,000 in fees for each of two successful settlements for former students abused by pedophile teacher Paul John Lyons at the Canberra Catholic private school Daramalan College.
The woman says she needs the money to help support her children. While she was a high academic achiever, she says she was not able to apply herself successfully to a career, which she puts down to psychological problems stemming from the sexual abuse.
Another critic of Towards Healing is the advocacy group Broken Rites, which chronicles abuse by the Catholic Church and provides advice for victims.
Broken Rites says it has counted at least 103 priests and religious brothers sentenced in Australian courts since 1993, when the organisation started up.
According to retired social science academic Bernard Barrett, a researcher who has done pro bono work for Broken Rites, the amount the church pays to victims has less to do with justice than "the assertiveness of the victim".
"If they think you might accept $25,000, they will offer that. If the victim puts up a fight, they might up it by $10,000 or $15,000."
However, Barrett says while money is often handy, it is more important for victims to obtain justice, acknowledgement and restitution. Broken Rites advises victims to first go to the police to get a criminal conviction.
Broken Rites claims to have "got" pedophile priest Wilfred James Baker, by advising callers to its hotline established in 1993 to report his abuse to Victorian police.
In 1999 Baker was sentenced to four years in jail, with parole after two years, for sex crimes against eight boys. Judge Russell Lewis found the church had transferred Baker to another parish after a family complained in 1978 that the priest was misbehaving toward their son.
"In the past, there have been pedophile priests who have been moved around with the full knowledge of the hierarchy," Lewis said.
The then archbishop of Melbourne George Pell publicly apologised to Baker's victims. But despite Baker's criminal conviction and a finding of complicity by church leaders, Baker's victims have not been able to get substantial payouts from the church without a fight.
Barrett provides the case of one man. "Father Baker abused me for about 18 months at Eltham," the man says. "The limit placed in compensation by the Towards Healing board is $55,000 but my lawyers (Slater and Gordon) got me $100,000 - much more than their 'limit' but nowhere near enough as far as I am concerned. Baker ruined my life. I would advise any more of Baker's victims to settle for nothing less than $100,000."
The Towards Healing program is run by the Catholic church's National Committee for Professional Standards. Executive officer Julian McDonald says Towards Healing is not about compensation, but restitution.
McDonald says that at any point up until an agreement is signed, complainants are entitled to pull out of the Towards Healing process and go down the civil damages route. The committee urges complainants to take their cases to the police, and assists them in gathering evidence, McDonald says.
McDonald says the aim of Towards Healing is to get a total outcome which provides a measure of relief and closure for victims, which can involve education, counselling, and assistance with getting jobs.
"It's not something handed down in an authoritarian way," McDonald says. "We ask: what would help you get your life back on track?" Victims, including Setches, say having enough money to live a respectable life would do the trick.
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