The days of the Church in Australia conducting its own investigations into child ¬sexual abuse “must be over”, according to the Chief Executive of the Truth, Justice and Healing Council, Francis Sullivan.
Mr Sullivan’s comments were published in The Weekend Australian on 16-17 October in response to a call for a national ¬redress scheme to compensate ¬victims of abuse.
“More than anything else, abuse survivors have been calling for fair and compassionate redress,” Mr Sullivan said.
“With the decisions about what this looks like taken out of the hands of the institutions responsible for the abuse,” he said.
“In the case of the Catholic Church, the days of the Church ¬investigating itself must be over.”
The Catholic and Anglican Churches across Australia have strongly backed a call for a national redress scheme to compensate victims of child ¬sexual abuse. By doing so, the Churches have intensified pressure on the federal government to support such a scheme.
Mr Sullivan wrote to new Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull on 25 September, asking him to clarify the government’s position but has, as yet, received no ¬response.
“At the moment, it is very difficult to gauge the commonwealth’s reaction,” Mr Sullivan said.
The recommendation for a ¬national scheme is the centrepiece of the commission’s latest report. The commission recommends a national ¬redress scheme administered by the government under which compensation is paid by the institution where the abuse occurred.
This would hit particularly hard the Catholic Church, in whose institutions about 36 per cent of the abuse allegations made to the commission occurred.
Mr Sullivan said it was important the scheme be introduced.
“If, at the end of this royal commission, a national independent redress framework for survivors of child abuse hasn’t, at the very least, been signed on to by all governments – federal, state and territory – then we will be left with a big question mark over the value of the whole process,” he said.