Child sex abuse royal commission:
sins of the fathers to be laid bare, When the late Frank Little retired
two decades ago, he recounted with humility and understated humour the
highlight of his 22-year calling as Archbishop of Melbourne.
Little
was preparing to pass the keys to St Patrick’s Cathedral to George
Pell when he recounted a trip around Flemington Racecourse with Pope
John Paul II in 1986.
“I was
in the Popemobile with the Holy Father and we were going down the
straight, away from people, and then there was a lady who was separated
from everyone else and she saw her opportunity and ran over to the
fence,” Little recalled.
“The
Holy Father was getting ready to wave to her, then she waved like mad
and yelled out, ‘Hello, Archbishop Little.’ He was marvellous, he was
sort of taken aback for a moment, and then he turned around and sort of
smiled saying, ‘Win some, lose some.’ ”
In
the nearly 10 years since Little died aged 83 in 2008, many have
forgotten the broad sense of warmth and appeal that marked the late
archbishop’s decades in charge of the heartland of Victorian
Catholicism.
Fast-forward a
decade and few could have predicted that Little’s reputational win-loss
ratio had peaked, that his fall from grace would be so catastrophically
complete and his history so comprehensively rewritten.
As
the child sex abuse royal commission prepares to release its final
report this week, two of its last three case studies focused on dioceses
in Melbourne and Ballarat and the third on the Anglican Diocese of
Newcastle.
The two faiths
dominated complaints cited at the inquiry; 4756 Catholic abuse
complaints, mostly between 1950 and 1989, and 1119 reported Anglican
complaints, between 1980 and 2015.
In
the Victorian reports, the commission found that the once admired
Little had led a coterie of senior Catholics in Melbourne between 1974
and 1996 who were responsible for a run of cover-ups of sex offending by
clergy and a long-term pattern of failing to protect children.
The
evidence is appalling, including cases where obfuscation or inaction
guaranteed further offending; where seven of the priests mentioned by
the commission committed possibly hundreds of offences aided and
abetted by a system of Machiavellian indifference to the suffering of
the children.
Little’s
complicity was only exceeded by the relentless number of crimes
committed in a neighbouring diocese, with the effective green light of
the Bishop of Ballarat, Ronald Mulkearns, a man unmatched in his
capacity to shop abusers around western Victoria to continue their
offending.
There were
probably thousands of offences committed under Mulkearns’s reign,
although the final number will never be known, with apparently fewer
than 10 core offenders, some of whom — like their bishop — never facing
proper justice.
Combined,
the two Victorian case studies provided 825 pages of evidence and
commentary on some of the worst institution-sanctioned sex crimes
committed in church history.
The
Melbourne case study outlined in stunning detail the extent to which
Little failed to act to protect the children of the Archdiocese of
Melbourne, how police and prosecutors dropped the ball in the handling
of investigations into the disgraced priest Father Nazareno Fasciale.
But
also the extent to which no fewer than four high-ranking church men and
some Catholic educators failed to head off offenders like the insane
Father Peter Searson, who terrorised parish children in the full
knowledge of Little’s church.
Worse,
Little conspired to conceal the truth of offending across the diocese,
destroyed documents and worked assiduously with others to send
offenders to other postings where they would go on offending.
In
the Victorian reports, the commission found that the once admired
Little had led a coterie of senior Catholics in Melbourne between 1974
and 1996 who were responsible for a run of cover-ups of sex offending by
clergy and a long-term pattern of failing to protect children.
The
evidence is appalling, including cases where obfuscation or inaction
guaranteed further offending; where seven of the priests mentioned by
the commission committed possibly hundreds of offences aided and
abetted by a system of Machiavellian indifference to the suffering of
the children.
Little’s
complicity was only exceeded by the relentless number of crimes
committed in a neighbouring diocese, with the effective green light of
the Bishop of Ballarat, Ronald Mulkearns, a man unmatched in his
capacity to shop abusers around western Victoria to continue their
offending.
There were
probably thousands of offences committed under Mulkearns’s reign,
although the final number will never be known, with apparently fewer
than 10 core offenders, some of whom — like their bishop — never facing
proper justice.
Combined,
the two Victorian case studies provided 825 pages of evidence and
commentary on some of the worst institution-sanctioned sex crimes
committed in church history.
The
Melbourne case study outlined in stunning detail the extent to which
Little failed to act to protect the children of the Archdiocese of
Melbourne, how police and prosecutors dropped the ball in the handling
of investigations into the disgraced priest Father Nazareno Fasciale.
But
also the extent to which no fewer than four high-ranking church men and
some Catholic educators failed to head off offenders like the insane
Father Peter Searson, who terrorised parish children in the full
knowledge of Little’s church.
Worse,
Little conspired to conceal the truth of offending across the diocese,
destroyed documents and worked assiduously with others to send
offenders to other postings where they would go on offending.
“As
the evidence in the case study makes plain, a system for responding to
complaints of child sexual abuse in which the exclusive authority for
making decisions was vested in one person is deeply flawed.’’
For
the Catholic Church, criticism of its power structures has been running
for hundreds of years. It seems likely that when the commission hands
down its final report this week that it will back an overhaul of
reporting sex offences within the churches, perhaps even tougher
penalties for failing to report crimes.
Francis
Sullivan, the chief executive of the church’s Truth, Justice and
Healing Council, says that while Little and Mulkearns were at the head
of the rotten fish, there were plenty of others beneath them who had
failed to do enough to stop the crimes and subsequent suffering.
On the question of the church’s structures, he says: “The Catholic Church still has plenty of residue of the medieval times.
“The
handling of child sex abuse in the Catholic Church is all about the
misuse of power, privilege and those who participated in the positions
of responsibility. The leadership and those in positions of
responsibility instructively protected the institution before the
welfare of the children. It’s writ large in every page (of the
commission’s case studies).
“You’ve got to be angry because nothing else will change the system.’’
Where
it’s hard to get a full picture of where the commission is heading is
the significant number of pages that are heavily redacted because of
looming court cases affecting both Melbourne and Ballarat.
To
that end, it is not legally or practically possible to analyse the role
of now Cardinal George Pell, who was for years a prominent figure in
Ballarat and Melbourne. It’s fair to say, though, that after Pell took
charge of Melbourne there were significant attempts to deal with the sex
abuse scandal, chiefly the Melbourne Response compensation scheme, and
the veil lifted on offending under Little.
“As
the evidence in the case study makes plain, a system for responding to
complaints of child sexual abuse in which the exclusive authority for
making decisions was vested in one person is deeply flawed.’’
For
the Catholic Church, criticism of its power structures has been running
for hundreds of years. It seems likely that when the commission hands
down its final report this week that it will back an overhaul of
reporting sex offences within the churches, perhaps even tougher
penalties for failing to report crimes.
Francis
Sullivan, the chief executive of the church’s Truth, Justice and
Healing Council, says that while Little and Mulkearns were at the head
of the rotten fish, there were plenty of others beneath them who had
failed to do enough to stop the crimes and subsequent suffering.
On the question of the church’s structures, he says: “The Catholic Church still has plenty of residue of the medieval times.
“The
handling of child sex abuse in the Catholic Church is all about the
misuse of power, privilege and those who participated in the positions
of responsibility. The leadership and those in positions of
responsibility instructively protected the institution before the
welfare of the children. It’s writ large in every page (of the
commission’s case studies).
“You’ve got to be angry because nothing else will change the system.’’
Where
it’s hard to get a full picture of where the commission is heading is
the significant number of pages that are heavily redacted because of
looming court cases affecting both Melbourne and Ballarat.
“As
the evidence in the case study makes plain, a system for responding to
complaints of child sexual abuse in which the exclusive authority for
making decisions was vested in one person is deeply flawed.’’
For
the Catholic Church, criticism of its power structures has been running
for hundreds of years. It seems likely that when the commission hands
down its final report this week that it will back an overhaul of
reporting sex offences within the churches, perhaps even tougher
penalties for failing to report crimes.
Francis
Sullivan, the chief executive of the church’s Truth, Justice and
Healing Council, says that while Little and Mulkearns were at the head
of the rotten fish, there were plenty of others beneath them who had
failed to do enough to stop the crimes and subsequent suffering.
On the question of the church’s structures, he says: “The Catholic Church still has plenty of residue of the medieval times.
“The
handling of child sex abuse in the Catholic Church is all about the
misuse of power, privilege and those who participated in the positions
of responsibility. The leadership and those in positions of
responsibility instructively protected the institution before the
welfare of the children. It’s writ large in every page (of the
commission’s case studies).
“You’ve got to be angry because nothing else will change the system.’’
Where
it’s hard to get a full picture of where the commission is heading is
the significant number of pages that are heavily redacted because of
looming court cases affecting both Melbourne and Ballarat.
To
that end, it is not legally or practically possible to analyse the role
of now Cardinal George Pell, who was for years a prominent figure in
Ballarat and Melbourne. It’s fair to say, though, that after Pell took
charge of Melbourne there were significant attempts to deal with the sex
abuse scandal, chiefly the Melbourne Response compensation scheme, and
the veil lifted on offending under Little.