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	Church Sex Abuse Victims Say Guidelines Will Have No Impact ABC May 21, 2011 http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2011/s3223104.htm ELIZABETH JACKSON: The Catholic Church's long running problems with sexual abuse were again in the headlines this week. The Vatican has issued a new set of guidelines for the handling of clerical sexual abuse cases. But the guidelines aren't binding and victims are calling for tougher laws to govern the church. Michael Edwards has this report. MICHAEL EDWARDS: Nicky Davis knows about sexual abuse at the hands of a member of the clergy first-hand. As a young girl she was repeatedly abused by a Catholic brother who worked at her parish church. She says the abuse scarred her for life and gave her insight into how the Catholic Church deals with victims. NICKY DAVIS: The talk is all good, they say, we're doing everything possible, we help victims, we try to provide justice. But the reality is very, very different. The attitude towards victims is that we are the enemies of the church, that we are money hungry and troublemakers. MICHAEL EDWARDS: Nicky Davis's abuser escaped justice because he was declared unfit to stand trial by the courts. Clerical abuse is an issue that's plagued the Catholic Church for decades. Just this week, the Vatican issued a set of guidelines as to how local archdiocese can deal with cases of abuse. It says priests suspected of child abuse should be turned over to the police and the criminal justice system. But like many victims, Nicky Davis remains sceptical that the guidelines will have any impact. NICKY DAVIS: My interpretation is that every time they feel that the pressure is building for them to do something, they come out with a PR stunt like these latest guidelines which talk about action but don't actually do anything at all. MICHAEL EDWARDS: The guidelines just so happened to coincide with the release in the US of the long awaited report by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice on Catholic Church sexual abuse . It identified no single cause of sexual abuse. It found the rise in abuse cases in the 1960s and 1970s was influenced by social factors in American society generally. It says this increase is consistent with the rise in other types of 'deviant' behaviour, such as drug use and crime, as well as changes in social behaviour, such as an increase in premarital sexual behaviour and divorce. Nicky Davis says tougher laws are needed to deal with the problem once and for all. NICKY DAVIS: The current legal framework is completely inappropriate for the type of offence, for the type of damage to victims. It is treating child sexual abuse as if it was property theft and it's just completely inappropriate. It doesn't work. Ninety per cent of rapists are still out on the streets and still able to attack new victims and that not an acceptable result. MICHAEL EDWARDS: Dr Bernard Barrett is from Broken Rites, a group dedicated to supporting the victims of clerical abuse. He's also a sceptic about the way the church deals with its sexual abuse problems and he says these guidelines will make no difference. BERNARD BARRETT: The bishops don't have to follow these guidelines, the Vatican has given the bishops 12 more months to think about it. Now it's been a problem for the last 2,000 years and now it will be a problem for 2001 years before the bishops have to act on it. ELIZABETH JACKSON: That's Dr Bernard Barrett from the Broken Rites group ending that report from Michael Edwards.
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