Abuse Inquiry Slams Church Spokesman's Comments

By Barney Zwartz
The Age
April 29, 2013

http://www.theage.com.au/national/abuse-inquiry-slams-church-spokesmans-comments-20130429-2io28.html



Comments by the Catholic Church spokesman on child sexual abuse were inappropriate, disingenuous and possibly in contempt of Parliament, MP Frank McGuire said on Monday.

Mr McGuire, deputy chairman of the Victorian inquiry into how the churches handled child sexual abuse, said: "Before you've even come before the inquiry it looks as though the church is trying to minimise" the abuse problem.

Mr McGuire criticised the church for taking an umbrella approach to the inquiry but not when it came to compensation or remedies.

Criticising remarks by Father Shane McKinlay that clergy sexual abuse coincided with the social and moral collapse of the 1960s and '70s, including an attempt to lower the age of consent to 12, Mr McGuire said: "Is the church going to try to blame society?"

A Catholic spokesman appeared before the inquiry for the first time when Tim Graham, head of the Hospitallers Order of St John of God, gave evidence. He denied earlier evidence by victims group Broken Rites that there were paedophile rings in the order that gang-raped children, and that a child died after being thrown down stairs, but admitted there had been "deplorable and indefensible" abuse of vulnerable children in homes formerly run by the order.

Mr McGuire said there were 60 members of the order in Victoria, with child-abuse complaints against 15 of them - did this not suggest the order was targeted by paedophiles?

Brother Graham said the number was high because every complaint, including those with no details or those "strenuously denied" had been included in an attempt to be transparent. He said there was no evidence of collusion between paedophile members of the order, and that detailed police investigations of complaints between 1997 and 2004 had not led to any charges.

He said there had been 31 complaints against 24 members of the order in Victoria, mostly from the 1950s to 1970s, about abuse in residential homes in Cheltenham and Greensborough for boys with disabilities or behavioural or psychiatric conditions. Of the 24 brothers, eight were dead, nine had left the order, and the remainder were elderly. He said the allegations were devastating to the members of the St John of God order.

Mr McGuire asked if the order had updated its screening process for new members, such as psychological testing. Brother Graham replied no, but there were no new Australian members

Mr McGuire: "You are now telling us that after all this you've done nothing to stop this happening again?"

Brother Graham: "There's more awareness."

Mr McGuire: "We need more than awareness. What does that say to the community?"

Father McKinlay said he did not regret his remarks to The Aus-tralian newspaper. The inquiry had never before indicated any concerns about interviews given before hearings, and had still given no guidelines.

He said the church had been "very restrained", including waiting several months for the inquiry to publish its response to criticisms by Victoria Police.