Geelong Grammar Abuse Cover-up All Too Familiar

By Daryl Mclure Geelong
Geelong Advertiser
September 7, 2015

http://www.geelongadvertiser.com.au/news/opinion/daryl-mclure-geelong-grammar-abuse-cover-up-all-too-familiar/story-fnjuhr1j-1227516379812

Geelong Grammar nurse Catherine Parsons outside the Royal Commission hearing.

GEELONG featured in national newspapers, television and radio news bulletins throughout last week as the heartbreaking stories of sexual abuse of young children at one of Australia’s most prestigious schools, Geelong Grammar, were detailed at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

Once again, as was the case with the Catholic Church, it seems the Anglican Church/school, failed to act on reports from students being abused, continued to employ offenders at the school and seemed more interested in protecting its reputation than the children in its care.

This has been a common pattern with church institutions in which child sexual abuse has taken place, but offenders in several of the cases heard last week have been dealt with by the courts and the school has also made restitution in a number of instances.

On the other hand, lawyers did warn last week that while Geelong Grammar had settled legal action taken by at least four people abused as children, it could face more claims or a class action.

The Catholic parish priest of St Mary of the Angels Basilica, Father Kevin Dillon, gave another moving sermon on Sunday week in relation to the lack of Christian compassion and leadership shown by his church’s leaders in relation to the sexual abuse of children over several decades.

Father Dillon has shown the Christian compassion and remorse that should be the normal reaction of all clergy — all Christians in fact — in relation to such terrible crimes, such an abuse of trust and innocence.

And that really is the irony of this situation: Father Dillon is being ostracised by some people and feted by others for simply displaying what I think should be the normal, simple Christian response to such horrible crimes against children.

Should we not demand this response from all church leaders?

Is it not a true Christian response to admit such crimes, notify police of the offenders, have them punished and voluntarily offer to make restitution to the victims, rather than force them through hurtful and potentially expensive legal action?

Returning to the Geelong Grammar hearing, it just shows that even the most wealthy and prestigious of our elite educational institutions is not immune from the pedophilia that seems to have been tolerated in religious schools over three or four decades.

What went wrong and why? That is one of the issues the royal commission will hopefully address.

It seems it was in the 1960s that sexual abuse began to spread in the Catholic education system. Geelong’s Chris Pianto and others bravely began telling their stories in the late 1980s, 10-20 years after they were molested.

These people went public because of the lack of action and a cover-up by church leaders, who often moved offending clergy and teachers from parish to parish and school to school rather than reporting them to police.

Much of the royal commission evidence given relating to Geelong Grammar is already in the public domain through court cases against several of these pedophiles during the past 10 years or so.

Importantly, once again we have been reminded of the terrible cost to victims of child sexual abuse, the mental anguish and self-doubt, the feelings of guilt and betrayal.

We also remember that there have been more than 40 known suicides in Australia by people who have suffered sexual abuse at the hands of clergy and teachers around the nation.

Two weeks ago, retired Catholic Bishop Geoffrey Robinson told the royal commission, then sitting in Sydney, that the Vatican had failed to show leadership on the issue and that Cardinal George Pell had “destroyed” a unified Australian response to victims.

It seems the Anglican response has been similar and perhaps the hierarchy of both churches — and the leaders of other denominations too — should sit in Geelong’s St Mary’s Basilica some Sunday and listen to Father Dillon share with his congregation the stories of victims and his own anguish at the response of the institutional church.