• By a Broken Rites researcher (first version posted in early 2013, updated on 18 November 2017)

On 14 December 2017, Australia's Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse will conclude its five-year-long inquiry for the Australian government. The Commission has investigated how organisations, such as churches, have handled the issue of child sexual abuse. The Commission will make recommendations about how Australia could improve child safety. Many community bodies, including Broken Rites, have supported and helped the Commission's work.

Behind the scenes

During its five years, the Royal Commission's office handled 41,188 phone calls; and received 25,157 letters and emails.

A total of 7,892 victims accepted an offer to have a private interview with one of the six Commissioners.

If a victim wished, the Commissioners could arrange for the victim to have a private interview with civil authorities, including police. And 2,402 of the victims accepted this offer.

[Broken Rites has always recommended that any victim should have a private chat with child-protection detectives. Too often, a victim presumes -- incorrectly --that he or she is the only victim of a particular perpetrator. Sometimes, however, the detectives might already know of other victims of the same perpetrator. With more evidence, the detectives can eventually arrest and charge any child-abuser but only if the victims have spoken to the detectives. A victim's name remains confidential.]

Public hearings

The Royal Commission held 57 public hearings, lasting for a total of 444 days, and heard evidence from more than 1,300 witnesses (including a number of victims).

Each public hearing was on a specific case study (for example, about a particular religious order or a particular diocese or about a particular city or about a particular problem).

Cover-up

A significant proportion of the victims (in the private interviews and the public hearings) were Catholics or ex-Catholics, who described how their abuse was covered up by the church.

The practice of cover-up became a major focus of the Royal Commission.

How Broken Rites helped

For twenty years, from 1993, the Broken Rites research team (whose members had each experienced sexual abuse by Catholic clergy) were pioneers in investigating (and revealing) how child-sex crimes were covered up in the Catholic Church. By 2012, our research was having an increasing impact on the public:

1. On 2 July 2012, with help from Broken Rites, the Australian television program "Four Corners" revealed that, for thirty years, the Catholic Church authorities covered up certain allegations about a New South Wales priest, John Joseph Farrell (sometimes referred to in the media, for legal reasons, as "Father F"). In particular, the church failed to advise any of Father Farrell's child-victims about how and where to report Farrell's crimes to the Sex Crime Squad of the New South Wales police.
    
2. Following twenty years of research by Broken Rites, the Victorian Parliament appointed a committee of six parliamentarians to conduct a 12-months parliamentary inquiry (but not a Royal Commission) in 2012 and 2013 into how religious organisations within Victoria have handled (or mis-handled) cases of child sexual abuse. The Victoria Police stated (in a submission to the inquiry) that child-sex crimes have been concealed by the Catholic Church systematically. For example (the submission said), the Melbourne diocese (the one covering the Melbourne-Geelong area) admitted having dealt with a large number of the church's child-sex victims but the church had not arranged for any of these victims to speak with detectives from the Victoria Police sex-crimes squad.
    
3. Broken Rites research revealed (for example) how the Catholic Church authorities had covered up the crimes of Father Denis McAlinden in the Newcastle region in New South Wales. This prompted a Newcastle Herald journalist (Joanne McCarthy) to investigate other cases of church cover-up in that region. These Newcastle revelations forced the NSW government to appoint a Special Commission of Inquiry into two Catholic priests, although the government confined this inquiry to the Newcastle region, not the whole state.

In late 2012, the Australian federal government finally established a national Royal Commission to investigate the issue of child abuse in religious and other organisations more generally. For Catholic victims, the Royal Commission was an opportunity for victims to reveal how they had been forced to remain silent about the abuse, thus damaging their teenage and adult development.

Further information

To see the Royal Commission's official website, clickHERE.