Ignoring Child-sex Abuse Is a Crime in Itself: We Need to Show Leadership to Protect Children
By Joanne McCarthy
In January 1996, as Hunter priest Philip Wilson prepared to be made the Bishop of Wollongong, a young police officer who would go on to become NSW Nationals leader, Troy Grant, interviewed senior Hunter Catholic priest Monsignor Patrick Cotter. Grant wanted to know what Cotter knew of child sex allegations involving fellow priest Vince Ryan. Individuals need to speak and act. That can only happen ... where speaking and acting is not only supported but encouraged. The late Cotter, who was 82 at the time, denied that anguished parents of boys as young as 5, 6 and 7 had told him in the early 1970s about serious allegations against Ryan. A 25-page transcript of the interview shows Cotter repeatedly declined to answer questions on legal advice. He told the then Senior Constable Grant, "I don't wish to answer that".
Cotter also declined to speak about a letter he had written in 1974, in which he admitted he "decided to say nothing" about serious child sex allegations against Ryan "involving altar boys, and more than one". About 20 very young boys suffered serious sexual abuse over the following two decades because of Cotter's decision to "say nothing", and the Catholic church's mandating of that approach. Hunter police including Grant recommended charging Cotter for concealing Ryan's crimes but the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions declined, in part because of Cotter's age. It was a decision that "still troubles me", said Grant in August 2012, three months before the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse was announced. "In hindsight, and with more experience, could I have done better? Should I have?" he said. This week the former Hunter priest, Wollongong Bishop and Adelaide Archbishop Philip Wilson became only the third Australian Catholic clergyman, and one of only a few in the world and the most senior, to be charged with concealing the child sex crimes of another Hunter priest, Jim Fletcher, after an alleged complaint to him in 1976. The archbishop strongly denied the allegation and said he would vigorously defend it. Within the church there are already mutterings about why only church representatives are charged with failing to report matters to police. Why not parents, is asked, although quietly. Outside the church, and in the wake of 18 months of royal commission public hearings that have exposed appalling failures across so many Australian churches, schools, orphanages, sporting bodies, welfare groups and other institutions, the question is why aren't more people being charged with concealing offences after admitting they failed to report credible child-sex allegations to authorities? An even broader question is why have so many people, for so many years and across so many institutions, failed to speak or act when confronted with sometimes overwhelming evidence of serious child sexual abuse? It's not as if children weren't reporting the abuse, both as children and again as adults. This week the royal commission found the Salvation Army received more than 100 complaints, mostly from children, of sexual abuse in its NSW and Queensland children's homes, but reports were not referred to police. And like we've heard many times before about so many powerful institutions, the children were ignored, discounted or further abused for making the allegations, and bullied and intimidated when they sought justice as adults. Many institutions have been able to point to child protection protocols and procedures with flowery words and lofty aims, but the most depressing feature of the royal commission so far has been the consistency of the baseline response when those protocols and procedures were actually tested – defensive, defensive, defensive. The Salvation Army report was released while the shockwaves from the royal commission's 23rd case study, the handling of sexual abuse allegations at Knox Grammar School, were still being felt, including the dramatic fall from grace of former headmaster Ian Paterson. Paterson denied knowing the extent of abuse at the school during his nearly three decades as its head, and staggered witnesses with his surprise that a system of pastoral care that included five teachers who would go on to be convicted of child sex offences would have let students down. Knox principal from 2004 to the present day, John Weeks, has stated that the most important lesson in protecting children was that "we must be vigilant at all times; that is, eternally vigilant". I beg to differ. The most important lesson in protecting children is that being vigilant, and knowing or suspecting a child is being sexually abused, is not enough. Individuals need to speak and act. That can only happen in circumstances where speaking and acting is not only supported but encouraged, and seen for what it is – proof that child protection is actually the No. 1 priority, taking precedence over the status of the institution, or the status of the individuals involved, or their job prospects or ambitions. That requires real leadership. That thinking should extend beyond institutions to the source of the majority of child sexual abuse in our society – within families and in homes where children should be safe. Too many individuals faced with the moral obligation to support abused children – and not just leaders – have failed. We don't have to wait for the royal commission's final report to know that. Chief among those is the responsibility to ensure the rights of the most vulnerable, including children – those with the least power who are often up against the most powerful.
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