Right: Geoffrey Robinson, a retired auxiliary bishop, has been quoted as saying, "As long as the Church seeks to manage rather than confront, the devastating effect the scandal has had on the Church will continue and will cripple other activities."Arguments indicating that the Catholic Church does not offer sufficient support
1. The protocols adopted by the Catholic Church for dealing with accusations of sexual abuse against clergy are inadequate
It has been claimed that the Catholic Church only established protocols for dealing with accusations of sexual abuse against clergy when forced to by the bad publicity surrounding a number of such accusations. The support group for victims of abuse by clergy, Broken Rites, has further claimed that the procedures the Church has established are not externally verified and may be harmed by the Church's desire not to have to make large compensation payouts. Broken Rites has made the following claims, 'In 1996, after the high-profile jailings of Catholic priests and brothers, the Australian bishops published a glossy booklet, entitled Towards Healing, promising justice to survivors. The church established its own procedure for handling sex-abuse complaints, to be administered by a National Committee for Professional Standards ( NCPS). It also established a Professional Standards Resource Group ( PSRG) in each state to do the actual processing of complaints. This process applies in all of Australia's thirty-odd Catholic dioceses (except the Melbourne diocese) and also in the hundred-or-so religious orders.
Unfortunately, the Catholic Church's complaints structure is overwhelmingly "in-house"; it has an obvious shortage of non-Catholic members. It is male-dominated and clergy-dominated. The NCPS typically includes a bishop or two, an influential priest or two, a religious Brother representing male religious orders, and a religious Sister representing female religious orders.
Furthermore, the national committee has been headed for years by a nun who has been simultaneously a board member of the Catholic Church's insurance company - the company that finances the church's compensation payouts to victims. This woman's dual role is a clear conflict of interest.'
Fr Chris Riley, who heads Youth Off The Streets, a Sydney welfare service that assists homeless, drug addicted and abused young people, has claimed that the Towards Healing program hurt the Church's credibility and meant victims often did not have their day in court.
Fr Riley has urged that any family confronted with sexual abuse should go straight to the police and have the matter dealt with in court.
'Towards Healing, to me, I have to say, is a joke,' Fr Riley has stated. 'The perpetrator is the only winner there because often they are not charged, because it (the case) is settled. This is obscene, settling those sort of cases behind closed doors.'
2. The Catholic Church too readily accepts the word of those accused of abuse
It has been claimed that the Catholic Church has been too ready to accept the word of clergy who have been accused of sex abuse. One such case involves the current Archbishop of Sydney, Cardinal George Pell and Father Terence Goodall, now convicted of sex offences.
In 2003 Cardinal George Pell dismissed a sex abuse complaint against Goodall, because he gave weight to the priest's claim the encounter was consensual. This is despite the fact that Terence Goodall now admits that the sexual encounter between he and his victim was not consensual and further that he (Goodall) had never claimed that the encounter was consensual. Terence Goodall stated, 'I certainly did not say it was consensual, I don't know where they got that from.'
This case and many others have been used to suggest that the Catholic Church in Australia has been too ready to assume that clergy are innocent of the accusations made about them.
3. Clergy accused of abuse tend to be relocated rather than investigated
The support group for victims of abuse by clergy, Broken Rites, has made the following claims, 'Commonly, Catholic victims ... often ... merely told a church official - perhaps at a bishop's office or the headquarters of a religious order. But this enabled the church officials to "tip off" their colleague, the offender; and then perhaps he would be transferred to a different parish or a different school or, in some cases, to another diocese, to abuse new victims; or he might be awarded an overseas "study" trip. The offender's former parishioners (or students) would not be told why Father (or Brother) was leaving his old parish, and the new parish (or school) would not be warned why Father or Brother was arriving. Thus, countless children and vulnerable adults were put at risk.'
John Massam, in an article posted on Online Opinion in April 2003, noted that the tendency for the Church in the United States to merely relocate serial sexual offenders had become very general. Massam stated, 'The situation was so bad more than 15 years ago that the US independent newspaper, the National Catholic Reporter, on June 7, 1985, named every convicted US priest, in an effort to get the bishops to stop the clergy corrupting young people - but the "forgiveness", "repentance", and transfers of serial paedophiles continued.'
Fr Kevin Dillon of Geelong has claimed that there are prominent Catholic clergy who have tried to trivialise sexual abuse allegations troubling the Church. Fr Kevin Dillon has said the attitude of some of his colleagues that had allowed for the reallocation of suspected and convicted pedophiles made him cringe with embarrassment.
It has further been claimed that the Catholic Church's established failure to address directly cases of sexual abuse by clergy reported to it has weakened the standing of the vast majority of innocent priests.
Gary Fisher stated in 2002, 'In terms of numbers, child sexual abuse and pedophilia are relatively rare in society and by projection should be correspondingly rare in the Catholic Church and its clergy. By systematically not reporting priests and brothers accused of such behaviors to civilian authorities, the church has put the motives and behaviors of the overwhelming majority of all decent priests in question.'
Geoffrey Robinson, a retired auxiliary bishop in the Archdiocese of Sydney, has stated, 'As long as the Church seeks to manage rather than confront, the devastating effect the scandal has had on the Church will continue and will cripple other activities. Of what use is it to proclaim a "new evangelization" to others if we are not seen to have confronted the suppurating ulcer on our body? In all our preaching to others, we would lack credibility. Cardinal Bertone does not seem to realize just how much credibility the Church has lost over the last twenty years and how seriously we must act in order to regain it.'
4. The apology offered by Pope Benedict was inadequate
Advocacy groups acknowledged Pope Benedict's 'heartfelt' statement and hoped it would mark a turning point in the church's handling of sexual abuse by clergy. However, these groups have also called for more practical help, describing words as 'just another drop in a bucket full of tears' and saying they were meaningless unless the church overhauled its compensation policy.
Chris Maclsaac, a spokesperson for the advocacy group, Broken Rites, has stated, 'Sorry may be a start but we want to see a lot more. We want the victims to be treated fairly, we don't want them to feel that they have been shut out, we don't want them to be re-abused by church authorities.'
The parents of two daughters abused by a priest in Melbourne also described the apology as disappointing. Anthony and Christine Foster had returned from a British holiday in the hope of meeting the pope to press for better treatment for victims. The Fosters' daughter Emma committed suicide this year aged 26, after struggling to deal with abuse by a Melbourne priest at a primary school. Her sister Katie, who was also abused, turned to alcohol in her teens and was left brain-damaged after being hit by a car while drunk.
Anthony Foster said of the papal apology, 'They are only words - the same thing we've been hearing for 13 years. It is simply an apology, there is nothing practical there which is what we were looking for.'
At a Sydney demonstration against Catholic church policies, Wayne Elliott, who said he was a victim of child abuse but not by priests, also condemned the apology as insufficient. 'It is frankly not worth the paper it is written on. They need to do far more than that and they should have apologised a long time before.'
5. The approach adopted toward financial compensation for victims of abuse is unjust
The support group for victims of abuse by clergy, Broken Rites, has stated, 'Broken Rites is skeptical about the amounts of compensation that are being paid under the Towards Healing process. These amounts are less than the victim would obtain by suing the church for damages in the civil courts. One reason why the Catholic Church established the Towards Healing process was to limit the church's liability to pay compensation to victims.
When a diocese or religious order makes a payout to a survivor, the victim signs a Deed of Release, acknowledging that this is a full and final settlement and absolving the diocese or religious order from any further damages claims by this victim. This document does not prevent victim from reporting the crime to the police or from talking to the media. The only stipulation is that the survivor must not reveal the payment.'
There has also been concern expressed that the maximum compensation payment the Church will make under its internal processes in Victoria is $50,000. It has been claimed that Melbourne's 'unjust' system for dealing with sexual abuse has probably saved the Catholic Archdiocese more than $40 million that should have gone to victims.
Anthony Foster, the father of two schoolgirls who were repeatedly raped by a priest, has said that only in Melbourne, under the system set up by now Sydney Archbishop George Pell, was compensation capped (at $50,000). There was no cap in the Towards Healing protocol that applied in the rest of the Catholic Church in Australia or in the civil courts.
'When we went to court - as invited to by Cardinal Pell - they settled for a much larger sum. It's all about saving money,' Mr Foster said.
Fr Kevin Dillon of Geelong has claimed, 'We should offer as much compassion as we can; we should be the ones binding up bonds, and not be the wounders.' From this point of view, Fr Dillon has criticised the $50,000 cap put on compensation claims in Victoria for sexual abuse victims. 'For most people it's a life sentence and I can never understand why compensation is capped, because each case is different,' Fr Dillon has argued.