AUSTRALIA
The Australian
JULY 25, 2015
John Ferguson
Victoria Editor
Melbourne
Victoria Police has been exposed vastly overstating the number of suicides related to child-sex abuse by Catholic clergy, embroiling the force’s new Chief Commissioner in a scandal and further straining relations with the church.
The Weekend Australian can reveal a secret police operation uncovered the force’s error when it claimed there had been up to 43 church-related suicides in Victoria.
Police now concede the real figure is one confirmed suicide with church-related sex abuse as a contributing factor and say that more than 40 per cent of victims on the suicide list could not be identified.
The assertion that 43 suicide deaths were related to Catholic abuse was a central reason for the formation of the Victorian inquiry, which in turn was a key reason the national sex abuse royal commission was formed. Both inquiries subsequently confirmed catastrophic levels of child-sex abuse by members of the church.
The revelations, in a Crime Department intelligence brief, represent a serious embarrassment for new Chief Commissioner Graham Ashton, whose evidence to the Victorian parliamentary inquiry into abuse was savaged by a QC representing the church.
Mr Ashton told the Victorian inquiry in late 2012 that the force was examining for the coroner 43 suicide deaths allegedly related to church abuse, which was a claim widely reported at the time after an earlier investigation by a senior detective.
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