Abuse Survivors Gather outside Inquiry

The Sky News
December 9, 2013

http://www.skynews.com.au/national/article.aspx?id=932371

 

Survivors of abuse by Catholic clergy have gathered outside the royal commission in Sydney to call for justice.

Members of Care Leavers Australia Network and SNAP (Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests) carried placards and handed out leaflets as witnesses entered the hearing rooms of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse on Monday.

Nicky Davis from SNAP told AAP: 'We want the truth, that some in the Church have been trying to suppress, to come out.'

The commission is starting two weeks of a public hearing into the Catholic Church's internal process for dealing with allegations of child sexual abuse by its personnel.

Towards Healing was set up in 1996 to deal with the groundswell of abuse allegations against clergy and other who worked with the church.

A Truth Justice and Healing Council has been set up by the church to co-ordinate its response to the commission.

Ms Davis called the council a public relations smokescreen.

It was 'primarily a barrier between the bishops and the Royal Commission', she said.

A statement from SNAP, which has 12,000 members worldwide, said: 'In order to protect the reputation and assets of wealthy institutions and those who control them, we have been knowingly exposed to terrible danger. We have suffered unbearable pain, and many of us have not survived.'

Among the witnesses at the hearing are abuse survivors who went through the Towards Healing process as well Church hierarchy, including Rev Dr Adrian Farrelly, the chancellor of the Catholic archdiocese of Brisbane, and Rev Mark Coleridge, Archbishop of Brisbane.

Four cases will be examined, including three people who were abused by priests and one by a Marist brother from the Brisbane and Lismore dioceses of the Catholic Church.