VICTORIA (AUSTRALIA)
The Age
December 7, 2017
By Melissa Cunningham
A “catastrophic and inexcusable” failure by the Catholic Church in Ballarat to deal with paedophile priests led to scores of children being abused, a royal commission has found.
The response within the diocese of Ballarat to abuse complaints spanning more than three decades was driven by a desire to avoid scandal and protect the church’s reputation, the report by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse found.
“That harm could have been avoided if the Church had acted in the interests of children rather than in its own interests,” the commission said in a report released on Wednesday.
The findings, which come a day after a similarly damning report about the Melbourne archdiocese, said “there was a tendency by clergy in the diocese to treat complaints or allegations of child sexual abuse dismissively and in favour of the priest who was the subject of the allegation”.
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