After Decades of Injustice, the Sex Crime Revolution Arrives

By Judy Courtin
The Age
December 04, 2012

http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/after-decades-of-injustice-the-sex-crime-revolution-arrives-20121203-2aqzh.html

WITH a celebratory, yet very holy, time of the year approaching, it is time to reflect on the rapidly unfolding religious revolution in Australia.

This uprising is the stuff of the thousands of victims of Catholic clergy sex crimes, and their families. After decades of obstruction and further harm from a self-serving, dishonest and defiant church, these courageous people have rallied with their loud and clear collective voice.

This voice has finally overpowered what have previously been resistant federal governments, all of which have been shamefully beholden to the Catholic Church.

The national royal commission, announced by Prime Minister Julia Gillard, will indeed nourish this revolution.

While governments can be congratulated for taking a stand and doing the right thing, it is not for governments to politicise these matters or to demand the spotlight. The acclaim must go to those so badly and criminally wronged. Wronged primarily by the institution of the Catholic Church, but also by the inexcusable neglect and deaf ears of all governments over too many years. Governments should be hanging their heads in shame and saying sorry for past failures to act.

In protecting its most vulnerable citizens, it is the role of governments to hold such inquiries and their duty to do so.

Apart from victims and their families, praise must also go to the media - the very media about which Cardinal George Pell so vehemently vented his spleen and blamed for making an imaginary mountain out of a Catholic molehill. It has been the press with its unfaltering exposure of the crimes and misdeeds of the church and the subsequent harm to the victims that is deserving of applause. Without the press, there would still be no inquiry in Australia.

It appeared too that the recent announcement by our Prime Minister came at a blistering speed. But this seismic turnaround in Australia did not happen overnight.

For governments to act it has not only taken the more recent exposures in Victoria and NSW of actual and alleged crimes within the church, but also the decades of campaigning by victims and others, countless suicides and premature deaths and immeasurable human and economic costs.

There are many thousands of brave survivors who have been fighting for decades for this justice. It is their relentless battling that has brought about this royal commission.

The response by the hierarchy of the Catholic Church to the national inquiry also continues to unfurl. Cardinal Pell, after damning the idea and insisting that the church had already delivered justice to its victims (by giving them ''due procedure'' and an ''apology''), has performed a turnaround, claiming full co-operation with the inquiry.

As a desperate last effort to save face, the archbishop presented the reporters at his now infamous and denigratory press conference of November 13 with a booklet entitled Sexual Abuse: The Response of the Archdiocese of Sydney. This document mirrors that of Archbishop Hart's, Facing the Truth, also the title for the Melbourne archdiocese's submission to the Victorian parliamentary inquiry.

A major component of these documents argues the church's internal complaints processes represent ''a significant break'' with past practices by, inter alia, investigating complaints and offering a pastoral process in a non-adversarial way. This claim is fallacious.

The ''due procedure'' of which the archbishop speaks is not only a misnomer, it displays contempt for the vast majority of victims who went through the church's internal complaints processes, the Melbourne Response and Towards Healing. These internal church processes neither follow due process nor do they deliver justice. They cause secondary trauma and distress to the victims.

My research has found these processes to be highly legalistic and adversarial. They isolate victims, disempower them and minimise their story. Far too many victims have come through the processes with post-traumatic stress disorder, have committed suicide or thought about or attempted suicide.

Victims feel threatened and feel themselves to be more like the instigator or even the perpetrator of the crimes. They feel degraded, humiliated, bullied, belittled, stripped bare and distraught. They say the church is doing the right thing by itself at the expense of the victims.

I am sorry Cardinal Pell, but you have got it wrong. My research shows that your internal complaints processes, which you hold up as a testament to change within your church, do not represent ''a significant break'' with past practices. Your internal processes, to which victims go because they are otherwise unable to sue, aim not to deliver justice to victims, rather, to contain the crimes of your clergy and preserve the name of your church.

But these crimes and their concealment can be hidden no longer. Their enforced exposure will vindicate the victims and, hopefully, result in accountability and prosecutions of the wrongdoers.

It is time for you, Cardinal Pell, to stop blaming ''the anti-Catholic prejudice that is unfairly vilifying'' your church. It is time for you to recognise that paedophilia is a crime and not merely ''an addiction''.

Recently, your eminence said "… we've got rid of the moral cancer. So, in a spiritual sense, you'd have to say the church is healthier than it was when this went undetected." Firstly, the crimes of which you speak did not go ''undetected'' by the hierarchy. They went underground. Secondly, in a spiritual sense, the church will be healthier when all wrongdoers (including those guilty of concealment of the crimes and protection of the paedophiles) are exposed and held accountable. Like any other criminal, those in the Catholic church must be charged, prosecuted and punished.

This revolt against the crimes of the church is undoubtedly led by the victims, but it is progressively being joined by the majority of the church's flock who insist not only on justice for victims, but on fundamental changes within the church.