Sex-abuse report ready after five years

Australia this week was bracing itself for the delivery of the final report of the five-year Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse on Friday (15 December).

But, as The Tablet went to press, it was not clear when the multi-volume report would be made publicly available – a decision for the Australian government, not for the Royal Commission.

The Commission’s reports, which have been released progressively during the course of the inquiry – for instance those on the more than 50 case studies that it has conducted – have been made available publicly after they have been tabled in parliament. But the federal parliament rose for the Christmas-New Year recess last week. It is not due to sit again until 5 February 2018.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has given no indication about whether the final report will be released before being tabled. But survivors, their advocates and some within the Church are concerned about a loss of impetus once the Commission ends on Friday – and are putting pressure on the government to release the final report before Christmas.

On its website, the Royal Commission – which the then prime minister Julia Gillard announced in November 2012 and began its work early the following year – said its final report would make recommendations that aimed to support and inform Australian governments, institutions and the public in preventing and responding to child sexual abuse in institutional contexts. “In addition the Final Report will document, for the public record, the experiences of people affected by this abuse,” it said.

The Commissioners have met more than 8,000 survivors in private sessions since early 2013, as well as taking evidence at public hearings across Australia. They have referred more than 2,500 matters to authorities, including to the police. The Royal Commission was to hold a final public hearing, allowing the six Commissioners to thank Australians for their support, on the eve of presenting the report to Governor-General Sir Peter Cosgrove.

Francis Sullivan, CEO of the Catholic Church’s liaison body with the Royal Commission, the Truth, Justice and Healing Council, told a national meeting of Catholic secondary school principals in Adelaide last month that the final report was expected to comprise up to 17 volumes, and “at least three are expected to deal with the Catholic Church”.

Meanwhile, Fr Bill Uren, a former Aus­tralian Provincial leader of the Jesuits, has warned that the Royal Commission is likely to recommend that the seal of confession no longer remain inviolate, calling such a proposal unproductive. “Perpetrators will be less likely to go to confession and priests will go to jail,” he wrote on the Jesuit-sponsored Eureka Street website on 6 December.

Fr Uren, now Rector of Newman College at Melbourne University and an Officer of the Order of Australia, wrote that he had been a priest for almost 50 years and had never heard the confession of a paedophile.

He said the horrific revelations of the Royal Commission, and the realisation of both the long-term effects of the sexual abuse of children and the addictive nature of paedophilia, had led to a reassessment of the legitimacy of the exemption for confession.

However, “if exceptions were to be made to identify paedophiles, it would be only a matter of time before exceptions would be sought for other crimes where recidivism is endemic: for example mafia-style murders, domestic violence, serial infidelity, serial rapists. And then the inviolability of the seal will be shattered,” he said.

“I know that all priests of my acquaintance will rather go to jail than violate the sea,” he added. “I cannot then see that no longer exempting the seal will be anything but unproductive. Perpetrators will be less likely to go to confession and priests will go to jail.”