AUSTRALIA
The Age
Barney Zwartz
Religion editor, The Age.
Problems and experiences with the Catholic Church’s national abuse response have been targeted by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse as its next focus of inquiry.
The commission wants to hear about victims’ experience with the Towards Healing process, how it dealt with complaints and provided redress. It published its second discussion paper – of a planned total of 24 – on its website on Tuesday afternoon.
Towards Healing, the church’s response process for every diocese except Melbourne and for every religious order, has been the nation’s busiest complaints procedure for victims of clergy child sexual abuse.
Introduced in 1996, it has upheld 310 complaints of criminal abuse of children in Victoria, with another 110 not going through the process because victims went to the police or withdrew, according to the church’s evidence to the Victorian inquiry into how the churches handled sexual abuse.
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