AUSTRALIA
The Guardian
David Marr
Tuesday 24 November 2015
Not long ago, Tuesday morning’s revelations at the royal commission into institutional responses to child abuse would have made headlines round the world. Priest after priest in the Melbourne archdiocese of the Catholic church was caught abusing children. And for decades bishop after bishop ignored these crimes.
The priests were caught abusing as soon as they left the seminary. They kept abusing despite “treatment” and despite being shifted from parish to parish. The church knew what was going on and for a very long time no one called the police.
But Melbourne fits the now familiar pattern of the Catholic world. Gail Furness SC, piling up the numbers in her dry opening address to the 35th case study of the royal commission, might have been talking of Chicago, Brussels or Caracas.
In Melbourne, eight notorious priests have since the 1950s provoked multiple claims by 454 victims. What sets the city apart from cities in Europe and America is how little the church has had to pay. Furness puts the bill for damages plus legal and medical costs at not quite $18m.
But claims are still coming.
Before the day began, the atmosphere in the foyer of the Melbourne county court was strangely cheerful. So much pain and so many years have brought victims to this place, but they meet on these occasions as old friends.
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