AUSTRALIA
The Australian
STUART RINTOUL From: The Australian June 07, 2013
THE Catholic Church has significantly amended the number of victims abused by pedophile clergy and the number of offenders, including priests, brothers and nuns, in a new submission to a Victorian parliamentary inquiry into child abuse.
In its original submission to the Victorian child abuse inquiry, the church said it had paid compensation to 620 victims in Victoria. But after analysing documents held by various orders, the church has now admitted that at least 849 children were abused from the 1950s.
In the submission, released to the ABC yesterday before being handed to the Victorian inquiry, the church also included information on the number of offenders within its ranks. It said 269 men and women had been guilty of child sexual abuse. The majority were priests and brothers, but the figure also included nine nuns and 42 lay people.
In the submission, seen by The Australian, the church says that in its Facing the Truth admissions it reported that the Melbourne Response and Towards Healing processes had upheld the complaints of 618 victims of criminal abuse of children that took place in Victoria.
“Towards Healing and the Melbourne Response are the only processes that hold centralised records, and so their statistics were the only ones readily available for inclusion in Facing the Truth,” the church now says.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.