AUSTRALIA
The Border Mail
By Barney Zwartz
April 22, 2013, 1 p.m.
Child sexual abuse flourished in the past because Australian culture did not readily listen to children when they made complaints and because the churches did not want to face difficult and shameful things, Melbourne Anglican Archbishop Philip Freier said on Monday.
“We’ve always had high expectations but not the necessary checks and balances,” he told the Victorian inquiry into how the churches handled sex abuse.
“Functions would be clustered unhelpfully in one person or office, and it was a small community. People knew each other.
“Children would be disbelieved by parents and the adults around them and sometimes even punished for talking about it. It was an awful thing.”
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