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| Admissions of Failure
Canberra Times
May 3, 2013
http://www.canberratimes.com.au/opinion/blogs/wokkapedia/admissions-of-failure-20130503-2ix48.html
Admit nothing. The phrase, dead and colourless, was the match that ignited a slow burn of anger and indignation.
The words were mentioned in hearings this week at the Victorian inquiry into child sexual abuse by churches. The speaker was the Bishop of Ballarat, Paul Bird. He was asked by committee member Andrea Coote about a document from 20 years ago by Australian bishops in which the priorities for churches in child abuse matters were to avoid scandal, protect the priest, concede nothing and, after all that, treat the victim as secondary. Bishop Bird replied: "We were listening to insurers and lawyers, who said 'admit nothing'."
Things had now changed. The diocese had settled 107 of 166 claims.
Also at the hearing, committee member David OBrien asked former Ballarat Bishop Peter Connors:
Was there a persistent disregard for victims?
Yes.
Peter Rush, the CEO of Catholic Church Insurance, told the inquiry that "admit nothing" had been the strategy "wrongly" in advising officials. It was the "way insurers ran liability". It had ceased doing so from the mid-'90s.
I wonder how the victims feel about being equated with liability. It may be the definition, description and jargon of the insurance industry, but these cases were not cars or houses. They were young lives. It only further twisted the knife into the damaged heart. The phrase also evokes a broader question: who is master of society morality or commerce? Who drives our actions? That those words admit nothing should have been a factor was/is despicable. It's code for cowardice. Admit nothing: not the deed, nor the consequences, the responsibility, the life past abused, the life present scarred. Admit not the dead or the enduring pain and suffering. Is this the spiritual way to live?
To admit nothing and, in its alternate, deny everything is to protect the perpetrator (and who he represents, the church) and weaken the victim. It is the trade of gains and losses. The victims are central, yet peripheral. For years, they walked among us and yet were treated as ghosts. The shadow from the years of abuse that fell over this nation is still there, but with the establishment of inquiries and the formation by the federal government of a royal commission, light is entering the dark corners.
We have been the audience to story after story of what was basically the mental and physical torture of young lives by those who were supposed to be their guardians. In many cases, the young life found existence unbearable and ended it. The Melbourne hearing heard this week that 40 people who had been abused at Ballarat had killed themselves. This is more than a river of tears; it is an ocean, deep and wide.
Institutions only exist through those who inhabit them. The dwellers in the houses of the Lord are supposed to care and nurture the souls of others unto God. It is their mission. When corruption enters these houses through the vile motives and actions of abusers, then surely the only action is their removal, not their protection. To admit nothing was a disreputable defence of the indefensible.
For what was at stake? Reputation and money. In the insurance industry if more claims are made, premiums rise. If too many claims are made, some things become uninsurable. The truth in these matters becomes a liability. At first an inconvenience, it assumes the form of a many-headed monster, a hydra. It cannot be contained by denying its existence.
Those people and institutions who pursue the "admit nothing" strategy often do so in the belief that they are making a stand on neutral ground. It is an argument along the lines of "one cannot infer guilt or innocence from upholding the right to silence". This is well and good in criminal incidents of burglary and bashings.
Predatory priests are another matter. How many times has the church, faced with abuse complaints against a clergyman, moved the offender to fresh fields? Problem solved. That is, admit nothing, yet do something to safeguard the reputation of the institution. As for the victims, the wounds of the abuse, far from being salved, are stung further with the callousness of the church.
It is easy to understand an insurer's stance in advising a client to "admit nothing". And yes, the church is a business, but it can be argued a rather different business to others. It takes its mandate from God, after all. That being so, it is unfathomable to divine how an institution that exists to save souls through the word of God could use a philosophy of denial, clothed in financial caution, that declares to a victim of abuse: if we admit nithing it follows that to you and the world nothing happened.
Later during the inquiry, the deputy province leader of the Christian Brothers, Julian McDonald, said he could not explain the number of paedophiles in the Ballarat area in the 1970s as anything other than an "accident of history". Pity the boys who became mere accident victims.
Are those days over? It would be trite to say God knows. Men of the cloth and commerce, however, should be able to declare it so.
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