AUSTRALIA
Geelong Advertiser
DARYL MCLURE GEELONG ADVERTISER SEPTEMBER 07, 2015
GEELONG featured in national newspapers, television and radio news bulletins throughout last week as the heartbreaking stories of sexual abuse of young children at one of Australia’s most prestigious schools, Geelong Grammar, were detailed at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.
Once again, as was the case with the Catholic Church, it seems the Anglican Church/school, failed to act on reports from students being abused, continued to employ offenders at the school and seemed more interested in protecting its reputation than the children in its care.
This has been a common pattern with church institutions in which child sexual abuse has taken place, but offenders in several of the cases heard last week have been dealt with by the courts and the school has also made restitution in a number of instances.
On the other hand, lawyers did warn last week that while Geelong Grammar had settled legal action taken by at least four people abused as children, it could face more claims or a class action.
The Catholic parish priest of St Mary of the Angels Basilica, Father Kevin Dillon, gave another moving sermon on Sunday week in relation to the lack of Christian compassion and leadership shown by his church’s leaders in relation to the sexual abuse of children over several decades.
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