1 in 14 Catholic priests accused of child abuse in Australia
Inquiry commission hears how records were destroyed, religious figures reassigned when accusations surfaced
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Cardinal
George Pell walks onto the stage for the opening mass for World Youth
Day in Sydney, Australia, July 15, 2008.
SYDNEY Australia — Seven percent
of Catholic priests were accused of abusing children in Australia
between 1950 and 2010 but the allegations were never investigated,
“shocking and indefensible” data showed Monday during an inquiry into
pedophilia in the church.
The
Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse
heard that 4,444 alleged incidents of pedophilia were reported to church
authorities and in some dioceses, more than 15 percent of priests were
perpetrators.
Australia ordered the Royal Commission in 2012
after a decade of growing pressure to investigate allegations of child
abuse across the country, with the inquiry now in its final phase after
four years of hearings.
“Between 1950 and 2010, overall seven percent
of priests were alleged perpetrators,” said Gail Furness, the lawyer
leading questioning at the inquiry in Sydney.
“The accounts were depressingly similar.
Children were ignored or worse, punished. Allegations were not
investigated. Priests and religious (figures) were moved,” she added.
“The parishes or communities to which they
were moved knew nothing of their past. Documents were not kept or they
were destroyed. Secrecy prevailed as did cover ups.”
The average age of the victims at the time was 10 for girls and 11 for boys.
Of the 1,880 alleged perpetrators, 90 percent were men.
The St John of God Brothers religious order was the worst, with just over 40 percent of members accused of abuse.
The commission has spoken to thousands of
survivors and heard claims of child abuse involving churches,
orphanages, sporting clubs, youth groups and schools.
The church in Australia set up the Truth, Justice and Healing Council to coordinate its response.
“These numbers are shocking, they are tragic, they are indefensible,” its chief executive Francis Sullivan told the commission.
“This data, along with all we have heard over
the past four years, can only be interpreted for what it is: a massive
failure on the part of the Catholic Church in Australia to protect
children from abusers.
“As Catholics we hang our heads in shame.”
The inquiry has embroiled Australia’s most
senior Catholic cleric George Pell, now the Vatican’s finance chief, who
was questioned over his dealings with paedophile priests in Victoria
state in the 1970s.
Pell was also accused of historic sex abuse
claims when he was the Catholic Archbishop of Sydney in 2002, but was
later cleared of any wrongdoing. He has denied all allegations.
Since being set up, the commission has made
over 300 referrals to police but so far there have only been 27
prosecutions with 75 cases pending.
The commission began its investigation in
2013. It has investigated the Catholic Church, the Australian Scouts, a
yoga ashram and other groups, and has made inquiries into several
sexual-assault cases in the Jewish community in order to report how
those institutions responded to sexual abuse against children and how
they prevented it — or failed to.
In February 2015 Australia’s most senior rabbi resigned after testimony heard by the commission revealed he had sent a message calling the father of some victims “a lunatic.”
Meir Shlomo Kluwgant stepped down from his
position as president of the Organisation of Rabbis of Australasia as
well as from the Rabbinical Council of Victoria, making him the third
high-profile rabbi to resign amid the inquiries into sexual abuse at
educational institutions.
A week earlier Yosef Feldman, director of the
Yeshivah Center, resigned after admitting to the commission that he
“didn’t have a clue” that it might be criminal for a member of staff to
touch the genitals of a student and that he was unaware of the correct
procedures for reporting incidents of sex abuse, The Guardian reported.
Rabbi Abraham Glick, who headed the yeshiva, also resigned at the time.