Church Victims Win $1m
By Jane Lee and Barney Zwartz
Eleven victims of child abuse, most at the hands of paedophile Christian Brother Robert Best, have won more than $1 million in compensation from the Catholic order. The victims have collectively received more than $1.1 million in private settlements with the Christian Brothers since they began negotiating last November, their lawyer, Viv Waller, said. The Christian Brothers told the state inquiry into child abuse earlier this month that they had spent more than $1 million defending Best. In 2011, Best was sentenced to 14 years and nine months in jail for sexual crimes against 11 boys at schools in Ballarat, Box Hill and Geelong during the 1970s. Most of the boys were also abused by other Brothers. Dr Waller said on Tuesday, a day after the inquiry ended, that she was still negotiating with the Christian Brothers on the claims of 97 other clients and would pursue the matters in court if necessary, with 10 others applying for compensation under the Sentencing Act. Australia's most senior Catholic, Cardinal George Pell, told the inquiry on Monday that the church had never said it could not pay more compensation and would do so if governments required it. Canberra-based lawyer Jason Parkinson, who has launched 400 lawsuits against the Catholic Church, said the church had settled every case that was not still ongoing, paying his clients either in pre-trial negotiations or in court. Claims that the church could not be sued were wrong, he said, but there were legal obstacles that could easily be amended, and he called for a two-year moratorium on the statute of limitations to allow abuse victims to pursue their cases. Dr Waller, who has represented victims against the Christian Brothers for about 18 years, said the state inquiry's public scrutiny primarily of the Catholic Church had been helpful. ''All Catholic clergy at the moment are keen to be seen to be doing the right thing, probably for the first time in history,'' she said. Best sexually abused one of the victims, Arthur (not his real name), when he was 11 and a student in his class at St Leo's Christian Brothers College in Box Hill. Most of his family still do not know about the abuse. He said pursuing his claim had brought him some closure and opened up a deeper level of trust with his partner, whom he had told for the first time last year. Arthur described this as ''terrifying but also relieving. It was a real feeling of stepping into unknown territory of how this was going to go, but it got to the point where I couldn't keep it a secret any longer.'' The group of victims had received compensation for their pain and suffering and for past and future medical expenses, Dr Waller said. Some needed the money for urgent psychological support as they had developed substance abuse problems to ''numb the pain'' of childhood abuse, she said. They had also received damages for past and future loss of earnings as a result of the sexual and physical violence that Best inflicted. Victims often left school early and found it difficult to deal with authority figures, which impacted on their employment prospects later in life, Dr Waller said. Media coverage of clergy abuse during the inquiry and ahead of the royal commission later this year was welcome, Dr Waller said, but it also made it ''quite difficult for some people to manage their symptoms on a daily basis when they're surrounded by constant reminders''. Many were unwilling to report childhood abuse while their parents, many devout Catholics, were alive. ''They feel that it would break their parents' hearts if they came forward now … I don't agree [with Cardinal Pell] that the worst is behind us. I think there will continue to be waves of people coming forward,'' Dr Waller said. She said the statute of limitations - which means many victims can only sue for personal injury before they turn 37, or 25 in other circumstances - was a barrier for victims who typically did not admit to being abused for decades. Lawyer Jason Parkinson agreed, saying a two-year window on the statute had ''cleaned up the backlog'' of clergy abuse cases in California and Hawaii, and would give Australian victims access to justice. He said that changing the statute of limitations, making the church legally responsible for priests and brothers and letting victims pursue its assets, would remove major barriers for victims pursuing legal action. Mr Parkinson, who is representing 130 victims from Boys' Town in Beaudesert, said victims should not be deterred from trying to sue the church. ''The church has been caught out - 'we did all these awful things'.'' A spokesman for the Christian Brothers had not returned Fairfax Media's calls by Tuesday night.
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