Church in Quandary over Sex Abuse

By Annette Blackwell
WA Today
January 22, 2014

http://www.watoday.com.au/breaking-news-national/church-in-quandary-over-sex-abuse-20140122-3180h.html

A cup of tea and a lie-down was once the Catholic Church's attitude towards rehabilitation of victims of abuse.

But times and the church have changed, the director of the church's Professional Standards Office for NSW/ACT told the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse on Wednesday.

Michael Salmon defended Towards Healing, the church's internal process for dealing with abuse complainants.

He has facilitated hundreds of sessions with victims and at Wednesday's hearing denied he kept the fact he was employed by the church from a victim identified as DK - a now 49-year-old man abused by three different members of the clergy while a student at St Augustine's College in Cairns in 1976.

DK went through Towards Healing in 2009-2010 and Mr Salmon was the facilitator.

At a commission hearing in December, DK described the process as a "sham".

He said he only discovered the supposedly independent mediator assigned to his case, Mr Salmon, was the director of the NSW Professional Standards Office when he saw something on television after the hearing.

Mr Salmon told Wednesday's hearing he understood that Brother Alexis Turton, who asked him to facilitate, had explained to DK his role with the church.

He also said that he himself did so in a telephone conversation with DK and later in a private session.

Towards Healing protocols advise that directors of professional standards not be facilitators and that complainants should have a say in their appointment.

Earlier in the hearing, Mr Salmon was asked several times by commission chair Justice Peter McClellan about the potential conflict of interest of a church employee mediating a hearing in which the church was a party.

Mr Salmon said he would give thought to his future role.

He added that Towards Healing was not classic mediation and he stressed the church's desire to provide pastoral support for victims.

He said at one time the general attitude towards abuse would have been have a "cup of tea, a Bex and a good lie-down and you will get over it".

Mr Salmon said it was important the church have a procedure like Towards Healing, and was confident it equipped people "to be better placed to deal with abuse, and the effects of abuse in their journey of healing."

The hearing on Wednesday also heard from Brother Gerald Burns, who was principal at the college when DK was there. He also attended the Towards Healing session in 2010 with DK.

Br Burns, now retired, said at the time he would have seen the touching of the genitals as a moral lapse, not a criminal act.

"I had a much more simplistic and incomplete view of the situation."

He said when he interviewed Ross Francis Murrin, who had molested DK, he accepted Murrin's reassurance it would not happen again. Murrin has been jailed for offences at Sydney schools.

"The whole question of sexual behaviour and so on in our church has been seen in terms that are not necessarily criminality terms," Br Burns said.

The hearing continues on Thursday.