Breeding Ground for Sex Offenders, by Derryn Hinch, 3aw, May 23, 2010

Breeding Ground for Sex Offenders

By Derryn Hinch
3aw
May 23, 2010

http://www.3aw.com.au/blogs/blog-with-derryn-hinch/breeding-ground-for-sex-offenders/20100524-w771.html

I know this is a bald accusation but it can not, nor should not, be sanitised in any way: The Catholic Church has been the safe haven and breeding ground for child sex offenders for decades. Probably a hundred years. And if it were not a religious organisation, shrouded in secrecy and protection, it would be ostracised and targeted by law enforcement agencies around the globe.

The protection granted to pedophiles over the years from popes (including the current one) to cardinals and archbishop is a moral and legal travesty. And it is only because victims have been brave enough to challenge the power of the church from Boston to Bendigo and launch legal actions that has forced a reluctant church to face its own demons.

It has only been since the Catholic Church, in the United States and Europe and Mexico and Australia, has been forced to pay out millions of dollars in compensation to the victims of that church's priests that Rome has started to listen.

I mention it today because of a burst of rare honesty from two senior church figures. The Archbishop of Adelaide and the Archbishop of Canberra and Goulburn.

Adelaide's Arhbishop, Philip Wilson, was long overdue to confront the issue. He has been accused of covering up child abuse cases and protecting pedophile priests for more than 30 years.

He now admits sexual abuse has caused more damage to the Catholic Church than few other issues in history and will continue to haunt Australian Catholics for a long time to come.

Wilson claims his own naivety about pedophilia and poor recruitment of fellow clergy for the church 'not having had the sense of how to properly care for children'.

How much sense do you need and how naïve can you be not to know that children are not there as sexual play things for any adult let alone their priest who is meant to be their spiritual guardian? That it is ethically, morally and legally wrong.

At least Wilson now admits that the church was wrong when accused clergy were not reported to police but just transferred to another diocese to often repeat their abhorrent behaviour.

He confesses: 'I think the really big difficulty and criticism of the church is that when there was evidence of it, and it was known, that people were just moved on'. Archbishop Coleridge says the 'culture of the church' had led to abuse.

'In the case of clerical abuse of the young we are dealing with crime. True sin must be forgiven, so too must crime be punished' Hallelujah!

Archbishop George Pell – now reportedly up for a top Vatican job once said: 'abortion is a worse moral scandal than priests sexually abusing young people.' There were allegations of sex abuse made against Pell and he stood down. He was later exonerated by a church inquiry.

In his younger years Pell shared a house with notorious convicted paedophile priest Gerald Ridsdale - one of the worst serial molesters in history.

Years later, as a show of support, Pell ostentatiously turned up at Ridsdale's side during his first court appearance.

One of the specious arguments that church leaders from the Pope down try to use to justify the cover-ups is that times have changed. We are more aware and enlightened now. Bulldust. It's more than 20 years since I went to jail for exposing a Catholic priest who was still ordained and still preaching and running a camp for kids despite having been jailed for rape.

That defence has also been trotted out by the Anglican Church. When Archbishop Peter Hollingworth was embroiled in cover-up accusations while Governor-General he tried to excuse his behaviour by saying things would perhaps be handled differently in these 'more enlightened and understanding times'.

To the public they were always enlightened times. It was just the church leaders who thought it more important to protect the image of the church than help sexually abused children.