Abusers May Be at Large, Says Church

By Barney Zwartz
The Age
April 23, 2013

http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/abusers-may-be-at-large-says-church-20130422-2iars.html

Some child sex abusers might still be among Uniting Church clergy because of poor record keeping and failure to investigate cases, the church conceded on Monday.

The Victorian inquiry into how the churches handled sex abuse instructed the church to investigate previous cases.

In other evidence, church spokesmen said it had no records of victims seeking compensation before 1998 because of inadequate record-keeping and that since then it had paid $2 million to 63 victims from the 1940s to 1986 but had not reported any cases to the police.

There have been seven cases of child abuse since 1998, all of which were reported to the police, the inquiry heard.

When committee member Nick Wakeling asked if failure to report to police and to keep records meant some abusers might still be operating inside the church, church lawyer Philip Battye said it was ''theoretically possible''.

Mr Wakeling: ''And do you have a view about that?'' After a pause, the church's Victorian general secretary, Reverend Mark Lawrence, said it would be of deep concern, but it was unlikely because so much time had passed.

Asked about the so-called Ellis defence by which the Catholic Church argued it was not an entity that could be sued, Mr Battye said the Uniting Church had not used it because victims concerned had settled. But he agreed the church had relied on the statute of limitations to avoid litigation.

Chairwoman Georgie Crozier asked why the church relied on that provision. Mr Battye: ''I'm afraid I don't understand the question.'' When Ms Crozier repeated it, Mr Battye said the church would use the defence ''because it is open to it to do so''.

Associate general secretary Peter Blackwood said the church had not found the Child Safe program suitable, and was designing its own. Deputy chairman Frank McGuire said: ''What you are saying is you hope this will work. I think we've moved beyond that, haven't we?''

Earlier, the inquiry heard that child sex abuse was a hidden problem among Victorian Muslim communities. Joumanah El Matrah of the Australian Muslim Women's Centre for Human Rights, who gave some evidence behind closed doors, said no culture was immune from child sexual abuse, but she had not heard of a single instance.

Ms El Matrah said there was an urgent need to raise community awareness so parents could recognise the symptoms of abuse.

She suggested the government should work with social welfare groups rather than religious leaders, who could not be transparent on such issues.

Melbourne Anglican Archbishop Philip Freier said child sexual abuse flourished in the past because Australian culture did not readily listen to children and because the churches did not want to face difficult and shameful things.

Claire Sargent, the independent director of professional standards, said there had been 46 complaints of sex abuse in the Melbourne diocese in the past 58 years. There were 10 financial settlements since 2003, totalling $268,000.

Ms Sargent said the church encouraged victims to report to the police, and she had driven them there herself, but there was a difference between current abuse and historical events where the perpetrator might be dead, or the victim might not know the abuser's name. ''It might just be George in 1962,'' she said.