AUSTRALIA
Brisbane Times
April 12, 2015
Chris Vedelago, Jane Lee
The Catholic Church had set aside tens of millions of dollars to compensate sexual abuse victims years before it was prepared to publicly acknowledge the extent of the problem and now has up to $150 million set aside to cover existing and future claims.
The Sunday Age can reveal the church’s insurance company has allocated up to $150 million to cover outstanding and anticipated compensation claims,more than three times the amount believed to have been paid to victims to date.
This figure is likely to rise as victims continue to come forward amid hearings by the Royal Commission on Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.
Internal documents show the church’s insurance company, Catholic Church Insurance Ltd (CCI), had warned the nation’s bishops that the church was facing financial exposure to sexual abuse compensation claims as early as 1988 – more than seven years before the creation of the Melbourne Response and Towards Healing victim assistance programs in 1996.
Concerns about the church’s liability led CCI to propose a dedicated sexual abuse insurance policy that would cover the church for alleged incidents going back to 1969.
“CCI’s aim is to assist the church by providing protection in a difficult area and one which is increasingly being excluded by worldwide insurance markets. We intend treating this insurance as a special accommodation line for the church,” CCI’s then underwriting manager wrote to the bishops in 1990.
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