Sex Abuse Inquiry Will "Cleanse Churches"

By Paul Mulvey
Sydney Morning Herald
November 12, 2012

http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-national/sex-abuse-inquiry-will-cleanse-churches-20121112-298el.html

A survivor of sexual abuse at the hands of the Christian Brothers says a royal commission will help cleanse churches of evil.

Peter Blenkiron spoke to fellow survivors who were in tears on Monday when they heard that Prime Minister Julia Gillard had bowed to pressure to set up a royal commission into child sex abuse by members of the church.

"This is massive. I've just been speaking to blokes in tears, tears of joy," Mr Blenkiron told AAP.

"People have asked me what about the hardship it's going to create for everybody. It's a necessary short term pain for long term gain that brings out the truth."

Mr Blenkiron hit out at Australia's most senior Catholic, Cardinal George Pell, who said calls for a royal commission were disproportionate.

"It's not church bashing, this is a necessary cleansing to remove pure evil from organisations that call themselves religious bodies," he said.

"What organisation would want those evil men as part of them?"

And he also savaged Cardinal Pell's claim that victims got justice when the church apologised.

Mr Blenkiron says no victim he knows believes they have ever received justice.

"Tell him to look up complex post traumatic stress disorder syndrome. That doesn't go away, that stays with you for life and most often it ends your life," he said.

"And tell him to then support a system that will keep those people alive who need the help as a result of his church that he supported and he watched. All this evil was on his watch."

Mr Blenkiron said it was vital that a royal commission urgently address the number of victims still taking their lives, decades after being abused.

"We've got people dying today, so they need to put some sort of temporary solution in place to keep people alive. That's critical, absolutely critical."

Mr Blenkiron, who attended St Patrick's College, Ballarat, in the 1970s when hundreds of boys were abused, said it was also vital to set up a compensation scheme to help survivors pay the massive medical costs associated with their abuse.

Lawyer Vivian Waller, who has represented victims of church abuse for 25 years and has campaigned for a royal commission for close to a decade, said she had doubted this day would ever come.

"I think this is a wonderful step in the right direction," she said.

"I can express relief and elation on behalf of my clients, who for too long have thought the Catholic church has acted as a law unto itself."