AUSTRALIA
Gulf News
[Submission from the Truth Justice and Healing Council]
AFP
Published: October 3, 2013
Sydney: Australia’s Catholic Church on Thursday unveiled a major reform of the way it handles child sex abuse cases, as it acknowledged it had “betrayed” the public with cover-ups which put itself before victims.
The Church’s Truth, Justice and Healing Council, established in response to Australia’s ongoing royal commission into institutional child sex abuse, released what it described as the “most significant” reforms in its 200-year history to its processes for dealing with claims of clergy abuse of children.
It came as the commission made public one of the Church’s submissions to the inquiry, in which it admitted it was “deeply ashamed” of the extent of clergy sex abuse of children and said many victims “were not believed when they should have been.”
“The church is also ashamed to acknowledge that, in some cases, those in positions of authority concealed or covered up what they knew of the facts; moved perpetrators to another place thereby enabling them to offend again, or failed to report matters to the police when they should have,” the submission said, describing it as “indefensible.”
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