Church Mistakes in Child Sex Abuse Response Indefensible, Says Archbishop

The Australian
November 13, 2013

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/state-politics/church-mistakes-in-child-sex-abuse-response-indefensible-says-archbishop/story-e6frgczx-1226759095503

Melbourne Archbishop Denis Hart says the Catholic church will back recommended changes to the laws over reporting child abuse.

MELBOURNE Archbishop Denis Hart says senior figures in the Catholic Church made indefensible mistakes in response to sexual abuse claims.

Archbishop Hart said the church acknowledged the failings of the past, as highlighted in a Victorian parliamentary report handed down on Wednesday.

"The committee's report is rightly called Betrayal of Trust," he told reporters in Melbourne.

"It is the worst betrayal of trust in my lifetime.

"I fully acknowledge that leaders in the church made mistakes - these are indefensible."

Archbishop Hart said the church had made significant progress since 1996, when it set up the national Towards Healing protocol and the Melbourne Response to handle abuse complaints.

He said the church would back recommended changes to the law to make concealing or failing to report child abuse a crime.

PELL: Singled out over abuse

NAPTHINE: Hang your heads in shame

INQUIRY: Hiding abuse 'should be a crime'

However, he said the church's confessional seal would remain sacrosanct.

Archbishop Hart said he accepted findings that senior church figures had concealed child abuse.

"I have to accept that church leaders in the past concealed crimes and caused other children to be offended against," he said.

Archbishop Hart offered the church's apologies to victims of child abuse.

"On behalf of the Catholic Church in Victoria I apologise again for these failures to the victims, to their families, to the community," he said.

Meanwhile, the Anglican Church has backed the recommendations of the inquiry and says it will fully co-operate with any changes to ensure children are adequately protected.

Anglican Archbishop of Melbourne Dr Philip Freier says the church supports the report's key recommendations.

"It is crucial that children be protected from abuse, and that we continue to strive to ensure that our protocols and processes meet the standards the community expects of us," he said in a statement.

Dr Freier said the Anglican Church would continue to provide full co-operation with the state government in implementing "whatever is necessary" to ensure children were adequately protected and abuse victims were treated with compassion, justice and equity.

He said the inquiry had been an important process.

"It is vitally important that victims have been given the opportunity to be heard in this public way, and that church processes and protocols have been rigorously scrutinised to investigate where improvements need to be made."

The parliamentary committee has called for sweeping legislative changes and widespread reforms of organisations that care for children.

The report says the internal responses to abuse used by the Catholic Church, the Anglican Church and the Salvation Army are not truly independent, provide only generic apologies and offer compensation without detailed explanation of why.

"The overwhelming message in both oral and written submissions to the inquiry was that most organisational responses do not adequately meet the needs of victims in achieving justice," it says.