(AUSTRALIA)
Zenit [Rome, Italy]
November 14, 2024
By Elizabeth Owens
Australia’s High Court Rules Catholic Church Not Liable Abuse Case
In a landmark ruling, the High Court of Australia has unanimously determined that the Catholic Church cannot be held «vicariously liable» for alleged sexual abuse by a priest in 1971. The decision, handed down on Wednesday, November 13, overturns a previous ruling by the Supreme Court of Victoria, which had held the Diocese of Ballarat liable for sexual assaults committed by one of its priests.
Central to the High Court’s decision was the issue of whether a church could bear indirect responsibility in the absence of an employment relationship between the priest and the diocese. The High Court found that vicarious liability typically applies to employer-employee relationships, and Victoria’s laws regarding institutional responsibility for abuse cases did not provide a foundation for extending such liability to the church in this case.
This ruling comes as a setback for DP, a man who came forward in 2021 with allegations that he had been abused by a priest when he was five years old in the town of Port Fairy, Victoria, approximately 300 kilometers southwest of Melbourne. The accused priest, identified by Australian media as Bryan Coffey, died in 2013, having previously received a three-year suspended sentence in an unrelated case involving sexual abuse of other minors.
The High Court’s decision follows widespread public scrutiny and legal efforts to hold institutions accountable for decades of abuse within Australia. The issue of institutional child abuse has been a contentious one in the country, culminating in a Royal Commission established in 2012 to investigate systemic failures in religious, public, and community organizations. The Royal Commission’s final report in 2017 documented a “national tragedy” with roughly 4,500 complaints of abuse from 1980 to 2015 involving nearly 1,900 priests, religious figures, and church affiliates.