A Vigilant Community Can Help End Institutional Child Abuse

By Paul Hegerty
The Courier-mail
February 27, 2014

http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/opinion/opinion-a-vigilant-community-can-help-end-institutional-child-abuse/story-fnihsr9v-1226838535347

IN MY business there is a saying: “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” The tragic stories uncovered by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse suggest a change to the saying. Culture devours child protection policy for breakfast, lunch and tea.

Culture is what a group accepts as normal. If a group doesn’t talk about child safety then in its culture it is normal to ignore child safety. If an organisation values other things above child safety then, culturally, it will minimise its seriousness. Policies and procedures, especially if they are from head office, will have minimal impact.

Archbishop Mark Coleridge spoke forcefully in The Courier-Mail yesterday about failures within the Catholic Church and a new path forward. He is concerned that assumptions the Church has learned in the past 20 years are rendered false by recent failings, especially in Catholic Education, which is meant to lead the way.

But an archbishop cannot change things by himself. Bishops already have policies and procedures but the strategy-devouring culture can chew and spit them out.

While wishing this was not the case, here are some incidents I have come across in recent years that illustrate that culture’s ongoing presence in the Church.

A bishop, in a news report, cited the number of cases of child abuse by clergy he had to deal with while in the job. The number he gave was half the number on public record for his diocese.

A social justice-oriented priest thought a convicted pedophile priest was harshly treated because the offender mistakenly thought the child was over 16. The public record showed the child was well underage and the offender knew the family well.