Church Says Those Who Impede Police Investigations Should Face the Law
By Ellen Feely
A spokesperson for the Catholic Church says anyone who impedes Police should be punished, after Victoria Police made a damning submission to a parliamentary inquiry which indicated the Church was actively hindering investigations. Priest of the Catholic Diocese of Ballarat, and parish priest of St Michael’s in Bungaree, Father Shane Mackinlay told Neil Mitchell the Church encouraged anyone accused of deliberately obstructing investigations to face the law. LISTEN BELOW: Father Shane McKinley speaks with Neil Mitchell "Certainly if you're doing that (impeding investigations) for benefit, that's a criminal offence and we would encourage any of those situations to be prosecuted,” he said. Father Mackinlay admitted the Catholic Church’s culture had previously been one of secrecy and resistance to acknowledging incidences of child abuse, but the rate of pedophilia occurring within the organisation was comparable to the rest of society. "I'm aware of a range of situations where people made bad decisions in the context of society's lack of appreciation of the nature this sort of offence, and the Church's culture of silence about this and their own resistance to believing that priests could be doing this,” he said. "Any of the research that I've seen indicates the rate of offending in the Catholic Church is roughly comparable with other churches and with society in general.” Victoria Police attacked the Catholic Church for deliberately impeding its investigations into pedophilia and child abuse within its organisation in a submission to a parliamentary inquiry. They allege the majority of child sex offences took place within the Catholic Church. READ: Victoria Police's submission to the parliamentary inquiry "Initial research by Victoria Police investigated the reporting and handling of child sexual assault by the Catholic Church and a number of other religious organisations including the Anglican Church, Salvation Army and the Jewish father from the 1950s to the current day,” the submission said. "Reported offences for this time period predominantly relate to the Catholic Church." Victoria Police are pushing to make it a crime for the Catholic Church to impede and conceal investigations of child sex abuse. Chief Commissioner Ken Lay first revealed Victoria Police’s frustration with the Catholic Church on the Neil Mitchell program, saying the Church had not once passed on any incidences of child abuse within its institution to the Police. Catholic Cardinal George Pell could be called to give evidence after it was revealed he was present after a young rape victim recounted an attack to a priest at a Ballarat school in the 1960s. The victim was in grade three at the time. Dr Vivian Waller who has worked to represent victims of sexual abuse within the Catholic Church for almost two decades praised Victoria Police in applying pressure on the Church. LISTEN: Dr Vivan Waller speaks with Neil Mitchell ”The Victoria Police have worked long and hard with no assistance from the Church-related authorities in investigating a lot of these matters,” she said. "Certainly it's my experience that the church does not encourage people to go forward (with allegations of abuse). "I've had many reports from clients whose mothers may have approached the local priest with difficulties and they've been hushed up and said it won't be in the best interests of the children.” Dr Waller said she was aware of two incidences where an alleged offender had been tipped off within the organisation of a Police investigation. "Sometimes the Police... when investigating allegations of sexual assault, may get the victim to wear a wire or tape a telephone call in which they attempt to have the alleged offender acknowledge that something occurred,” she said. "If the offender's been tipped off, then obviously that's not an option available. "I can't think of any other organisation that could preside over such an extraordinary number of allegations against its people and not once think that they should refer that matter to the Victorian police for investigation.” Father Mackinlay said the Church respected the privacy of victims, and would only reveal their identities to an alleged offender if the victim had allowed it. "There are rare instances where that has happened. The general thing that happens in most of these cases the accused is known to us already, either through enquiries that we've made, or they're deceased, or there's been a police investigation already,” he said. "If we get to the point where the details to identify the situation would include the victim's name, the victim would have right of veto at that point. "(The Church has) worked very hard with (Victoria Police) over an extended period developing a protocol which would allow us to report to them without victims' privacy being impacted and that would ensure that the independent commissioner didn’t' have this sort of impact (impeding) on police investigations." Father Mackinlay denied Neil Mitchell’s claim that soon a surge of child sex offence cases from the 1990s and 2000s would be reported. "The cases that are coming forward now continue to match the profile of cases we've had previously of a very large spike in the 70s and 80s and very little since then,” he said. Father Mackinlay denied victims were being paid by the Church in order to prevent them going to police with allegations of abuse. "We were very surprised to see the reference in the police submission to confidentiality agreements,” he said. "There has never been a confidentiality agreement in the Melbourne Response and there has not been such agreements in Towards Healing since 2000, and we've said publicly on a number of occasions in recent months that anybody who has an earlier confidentiality agreement would not be held to that.” Speaking with Ross and John, Religion Editor for The Age Barney Zwartz told Ross and John the same rules currently to not apply to the Church as do to doctors and teachers. LISTEN: Religion Editor for The Age Barney Zwartz speaks with 3AW Breakfast "The Catholic Church has conceded for the first time that this should happen, but of course it's too little, too late,” he said. "For a long time, they have claimed that nobody really understood pedophilia. They thought it was isolated incidents, they didn't understand the serial and predatory nature of these offenders.” Barney Zwartz said the Church had claimed that since 1996 it had begun to understand child abuse within its organisation and handled it better. "These claims have been exposed as being fraudulent,” he said. LISTEN: Fr Shane McKinley speaks with Neil Mitchell:
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