My husband and
I just spent the past three weeks in Sydney at the Royal Commission
into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. The hearing, Case
Study 50, was the final examination into the Catholic Church and its
failure to protect children from pedophile clergy.
We
listened to church leaders explaining what they have done in response
to child abuse by clerics over the past 4½ years of exposure in the
royal commission hearings and the public exposure over decades.
When
heads of provincial orders, bishops and archbishops were questioned by
counsel assisting Gail Furness about the new systems they were putting
in place, gaping holes appeared in these and their attitudes.