Catholic Church Backs Abuse Compo Reform

9 News
October 2, 2013

http://news.ninemsn.com.au/national/2013/10/03/08/22/catholic-church-backs-abuse-compo-reform

Lack of oversight and accountability by the Catholic Church in handling child sex abuse complaints has led to mixed outcomes for victims, a church spokesman says.

Francis Sullivan, chief executive of the church's Truth Justice and Healing Council has announced proposals to reform the approach to clerical sexual abuse.

The reforms would include a separation of the pastoral and compensation elements of the Towards Healing process, which deals with victims of Catholic Church abuse.

"There has been a contamination of the pastoral approaches by legal approaches," Mr Sullivan told AAP on Thursday.

This was contrary to the whole design of Towards Healing, he said.

He also said the church had not properly managed how the process actually happened on the ground.

"There has not been enough oversight, transparency and accountability back to some type of authority".

This resulted in "variable outcomes for victims on all sorts of levels".

Towards Healing has been operating in the Catholic Church for 17 years and has undergone several reforms.

The council, which Mr Sullivan heads, was set up to engage with the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse and has been looking closely at the process.

The council's recommendation for an independent church board to develop national child protection standards came on the same day the commission published submissions on the efficacy of the Towards Healing process.

The process came under heavy fire in those submissions, especially from organisations representing people who had been through it.

The submissions can be viewed on www.childabuseroyalcommission.gov.au under issues papers in the Our Work hyperlink.

Mr Sullivan said he had not yet read the submissions to the commission but the council was aware of the many complaints. This was why they were recommending a significant overhaul.

"It is a whole governance change that was not there in the beginning and has not been there since Towards Healing started," Mr Sullivan told AAP.

"In our proposals we are talking about a national board that would have reporting, oversight and monitoring powers over the various components of the Catholic Church in this whole area - including how they conduct Towards Healing."

He said the motivation was to ease the process for victims, who if they go through the courts, face the rigours of the legal system.

There was also the fact that royal commission recommendations could take many years to establish and might face significant constitutional hurdles, whereas the church proposals could be put in place as soon as late next year, he said.

He stressed though that they were only at concept level and had to be put to the church leadership.

Mr Sullivan said if the commission did recommended a national system of redress the church system could morph into it.

There has been criticism from lawyers that the recommended reforms by the Catholic Church are a bid to avoid making its trustees liable for the conduct of its priests and therefore able to be sued.

The Catholic Church is one of the institutions in Australia which is set up as a property trust and cannot be sued over crimes like child abuse.

The Australian Lawyers Alliance welcomed the church council's concession on the failure of the Towards Healing process.

It said however it remained concerned at the independent body recommendation.

"The bitter experience of victims suggests no body appointed by the church is truly independent," Australian Lawyers Alliance spokesman Dr Andrew Morrison SC said in a statement.

"There already exists a truly independent body to deal with compensation - it is called the court system," he said.

"All the Church needs to do is concede that its trustees (who hold its immense wealth) are its secular arm and are liable for the conduct of its priests and therefore able to be sued. That is the law in the rest of the common law world. Why not here?

"These are the reforms the Church should accept forthwith or the Royal Commission should urgently recommend be imposed by law."

Mr Sullivan said the council was not trying to stave off such challenges.

"The trust arrangement applies to all churches.

"This question may well and truly come up during the commission and we need to see how that goes," he said.