Towards Healing Responses Targeted by Royal Commission
By Barney Zwartz
Problems and experiences with the Catholic Church's national abuse response have been targeted by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse as its next focus of inquiry. The commission wants to hear about victims' experience with the Towards Healing process, how it dealt with complaints and provided redress. It published its second discussion paper – of a planned total of 24 – on its website on Tuesday afternoon. Towards Healing, the church's response process for every diocese except Melbourne and for every religious order, has been the nation's busiest complaints procedure for victims of clergy child sexual abuse. Introduced in 1996, it has upheld 310 complaints of criminal abuse of children in Victoria, with another 110 not going through the process because victims went to the police or withdrew, according to the church's evidence to the Victorian inquiry into how the churches handled sexual abuse. Director Tim Brennan said he hoped to provide national figures to the Royal Commission, but none had been published. The discussion paper is detailed and comprehensive. It asks 15 questions, from victims' experience of Towards Healing to its role in preventing child sexual abuse in Catholic institutions. The paper asks for comments about the way the process deals with complaints and redress, the responses and outcomes involving priests who are accused, the engagement and accountability of Catholic authorities, possible conflicts of interest, standards of proof, confidentiality, the role of lawyers, insurers and canon law. It ponders the relationship between Towards Healing and access to the secular civil and criminal justice systems, and the guidelines about referring complaints to police. On victims' options for redress, the commission wants feedback on what determines whether financial assistance is paid, how much, other forms of financial support, apologies and acknowledgements provided to victims and conditions on confidentiality agreements. Staff will examine the submissions, which close on September 4, while the commissioners are holding informal meetings with victims in state capitals. They started in Adelaide this week, after more than 50 sessions each in Sydney and Brisbane. Next is Perth, then Melbourne. Father Brennan said the protocol was an attempt by the church to reach out to victims who did not want to go to police or the courts. ''You are dealing with people who been through terrible ordeals. Sometimes it [Towards Healing] has been successful, sometimes it has failed to be what they wanted.'' Francis Sullivan, CEO of the Catholic Church's Truth, Justice and Healing Council, said the church welcomed public discussion. ''It's a chance to demonstrate how the church has remediated the situation o the past. If a process like Towards Healing were in place in the 1980s we wouldn't have the scandals we ended up with,'' he said. The issues paper can be read at the website, www.childabuseroyalcommission.gov.au, along with the first issues paper on working with children checks.
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