AUSTRALIA
Broken Rites
Examining the “Towards Healing” process: a submission to Australia’s national Royal Commission in 2013, prepared by WAYNE CHAMLEY, of Broken Rites Australia (updated 8 November 2013)
The Broken Rites executive team has gained first-hand experience and insights into the “response” processes that are followed by the various church and religious organisations. In regards to the Catholic Church’s process “Towards Healing”, our executive team has worked directly with many individual victims over the years. These victims have sought to have their claims heard by the Catholic Church and some have been less than satisfied by their experience of the process and the behaviour of church representatives.
We have also been contacted by many other victims who chose not to seek any advice or support at an early stage. Instead, these people made contact with us after they had gone to “Towards Healing”.
Towards Healing – principles, provisions and procedures
Since 1996, in Australia, a person who experienced sexual or extreme physical abuse while in a catholic-run institution, school, parish etc, has been able to seek to have a complaint considered by entering the church’s process or by resorting to civil litigation. In 1996 the Catholic bishops and the Heads of Religious Orders in Australia released the document “Towards Healing” and since that time many complaints have been brought to the attention of church officials, by persons entering this internal process, in good faith.
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