Despite Massive Reserves of Cash Victims of Abuse Have Received a Pittance

By Janet Fife-Yeomans
The Herald Sun
December 11, 2013

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/despite-massive-reserves-of-cash-victims-of-abuse-have-received-a-pittance/story-fnii5s3y-1226780577642

Former Bishop of the Archdioses of Brisbane John Joseph Gerry.

Most Rev Mark Coleridge gives evidence to the royal commission.

THE enormous wealth of the Catholic Church in Australia has been revealed in the royal commission with the Brisbane archdiocese alone having $30 million in cash reserves, on top of all the church properties.

Brisbane Archbishop Mark Coleridge said they were not even one of the "fat cat" diocese.

It also made a profit from its archdiocese development fund which last year was $22 million.

Despite the vast wealth, the royal commission into institutionalised responses to child sex abuse was told that since 1970, it had paid out only $2.5 million to victims of abuse by its priests and other religious brothers.

Of that, $1.7 million was covered by insurance so it had cost the church just $760,000.

Schoolteacher Joan Isaacs, who was sexually and mentally abused as part of a cult by one Brisbane priest, Father Frank Derriman, received just $30,000 in an out of court settlement agreed under the church's Towards Health process.

Of that, $20,000 went in legal fees.

Mrs Isaacs, who was 14 and 15 at the time she was assaulted, said her lawyer had sought around $340,000 for her.

Archbishop Coleridge, who worked at the Vatican for over four years, said he was willing to draw on any of these funds to pay what he called reparation, rather than compensation.

"In the case of sexual abuse, given what a crucial issue it is, I would certainly be willing to authorise payment from funds such as this," he said.

He said he supported the establishment of a national compensation fund which has already been flagged by the country's archbishops to which people like Mrs Isaacs would be able to return to seek further compensation.

He said the church's Towards Healing process, which is being examined by the royal commission, had been set up "on the run".

"This whole tsunami blew up out of nowhere," Archbishop Coleridge said of the revelations of sexual abuse.

"That might seem an extraordinary claim but that's my experience.

"Bishops and major supporters were like rabbits caught in a spotlight. They didn't know how to respond."

Earlier the royal commission heard a senior Catholic bishop deny being semantic by saying the church could not be responsible for abuse by its paedophile priests and other brothers because there was no such thing as the "church".

Justice McClellan turned up the heat on the retired bishop of the Brisbane Archdiocese, John Gerry.

Bishop Gerry said that the Catholic Church shared the shame of the abuse of children - but not the responsibility because individuals cannot be responsible for someone else's culpability.

The royal commission into institutionalised responses to child sex abuse is focusing in its current hearing in Sydney on the church's Towards Healing process and has heard that the discussions with victims who went though the "healing" process were often scripted by the church's insurers to avoid admitting legal responsibility.

There have been no civil claims against the church ever heard in a courtroom because the Catholic Church has made sure it has no legal entity to sue, that it was not "juridic", as Bishop Gerry described it yesterday.

Justice McClellan set up his questions by having the bishop agree that the church, through its various manifestations, was structured to invite encourage people to come within its activities and its spiritual care.

"It is able to do this because it has established over the centuries a reputation for following the steps that Christ has laid down through biblical works?" Justice McClellan put to him.

Bishop Gerry: "We are all sinners but we do our best."

Justice McClellan: "And some of those sins, as we know, involve very serious criminal offences, don't they?

Bishop Gerry: "It shares the shame."

Justice McClellan: "But bishop, I put it to you that the reason the event happens is because of the relationship which the church creates through what it offers and the people that accept that offer and come within its trust, isn't it?

Bishop Gerry: "There is sacred trust, yes."

Justice McClellan: "And that trust is trust which the church has created and offers to the public, is it not?"

Bishop Gerry: "Yes."

Justice McClellan; "And when it is breached, can you understand that many people might think that the responsibility for the breach lie not only with the church who provides that opportunity for the individual to breach that trust?"

Bishop Gerry: "Then the question is what is the church? The church has a tremendous variety of realities."

Justice McClellan: "Maybe so bishop but the reality of all those varieties is that there is one body which you choose, we all choose, to call "the church" which in its various manifestations creates the relationship which leads to the breach of trust, is it not?

Bishop Gerry: "But then the word "church" has as many different meanings."

Justice McClellan: "I'm sure that's right bishop. There will be some listening to this who might think that this has now descended in to a semantic discussion."

Bishop Gerry: "I hope not."

The hearing in Sydney continues.