The figure of 4444 people reporting abuse at the hands of Catholic clerics between 1980 and 2015 has seemed staggering to some. I was surprised that people were so shocked.
It is important to note the figure only represents those who have come forward and reported their abuse to some 90-odd Catholic authorities.
The rule of thumb for police investigators like those from VicPol’s Sano Task Force, is for every victim who comes forward, at least four will not.
There are those victims who cannot come forward, who are deceased, their lives often ended by suicide or in a storm of recklessness.
There are others who won’t ever come forward. They may a feel a victim’s shame at the abuse they have suffered. More often they appreciate coming forward will come at significant personal cost, the prospect of family dislocation, the ugly business of clerical sexual abuse meeting religious clannishness.
What we can safely say is the real numbers of victims is much higher than the 4444 figure. We will never know the exact extent of it but a speculative figure somewhere north of 20,000 victims of clerical paedophilia since World War II is not an unreasonable one.
Full column here.
Jack the Insider.
Just on your coverage having ears pointed in all directions , sometime back scout masters got a mention also on this but never hearing much since on kiddies interference. You may be able to clarify this while many must have done much good work in development of kids into the nature we have in this country. Strange this in the news , then evaporated some time back on news never mentioned again.
Rodent, good point. Not forgetting soccer coaches in England and swimming coaches here in Australia…..those issues seem to have gone to ground.
Never forget the good old scouting movement either Penny. There’s been plenty there over the years.
Bassman 05:11pm
I fully agree on your post having years gone by with kiddies lives destroyed by evil priest abuse .
These investigations “must” continue and throw these predators in the slammer knowing now stats surfaced of suicides occured from victims living a life of misery after interfered with .
I have “no” problem of those living a life of homosexuality , that is life , it is the cover-ups that we can’t except.
The very question I posed earlier, Mr Insider, now being asked at the Royal Commission: “After they are ordained, Catholic priests can’t have sex or get married. This week the Royal Commission asked the question: could the tradition of celibacy have partly led to the high rates of sex abuse in the Church?”
BUT, if that’s the case how come sex abuse has happened in the Salvation Army and other Church groups where Celibacy is not required?
http://tinyurl.com/hom98ta
Exactly, Henry. That’s why the celibacy argument is a bit of a red herring. The clerics who raped children knew it was wrong, knew it was a crime under the laws of the land and that it was a crime under Canon Law. The short answer is they did it because they could. They held power over children and knew children were vulnerable and in the not so distant past, not to be believed if they came forward to report the abuse.
Exactly it is more about power, control and desire than any other factor. They do it because they can. There are shocking accounts of children being raped by their priests in their own homes when the local padre has been invited to their homes for dinner. The priest goes to the bedroom to give them a ‘goodnight kiss’. The parents think all this is natural…but it ain’t.
Celibacy could well be a contributor in the case of the Catholics, but aren’t/weren’t some of the Protestant denominations where clerical marriage is allowed just as bad on this front? Many of the State institutions, too.
I suspect sexual repression in general and the whole power dynamic of being a big fish ministering, if not lording, over a small pond – something like Droit de Seigneur, perhaps – are a couple of reasons for the epidemics (and perhaps why it got so bad in some places compared to others).
I dread to think what might be uncovered if the Royal Commission and the police could get into some of the smaller sects and denominations and other religions.
It’d be good to see the police hauled over the coals for their actions and inactions in this regard, too. I wonder if some of the sectarian dynamics between the Catholics and the Freemasons in many police forces and other Departments might’ve had a role to play as well?
I think you’re pretty close to the money on your last paragraph Rhys. My 1.38pm post gives you my view.
It’s quite funny over in East Berlin. The day before Malcolm was the villain and Cory the hero. After the “Cristal” speech Turnbull is today’s hero!
Hell, it even had Plibersek laughing. Bowen had to ask what Cristal was.
TA didn’t find it funny. He just sat there.
Let’s face it, Shorten has enjoyed himself mocking Turnbull with the politics of envy. It was time the worm turned.
It makes good theatre indeed Yvonne and I applaud Malcolm for sticking up for himself at last but do recall in his end of year speech to Parliament last year he called for all to be kinder to each other in Parliament. Malcolm seems to have forgotten his own words of just a couple of months back. He’s a dill Yvonne and has wasted 16 months of valuable time any worthy PM would have used to achieve good for this great Country. Shorten goaded him and got the result he was after imho.
I just enjoyed the rhetoric, HB! Turnbull in his QC role, I guess you could say. brilliant off the cuff stuff. The biting sarcasm was wonderful. Ranks right up there with ”Mr Harbourside Mansion”, that Shorten has adopted and clearly loves, courtesy of Peta.Shorten has been asking for it – he got it. No big deal.
The rhetoric is exactly the problem. Run amok egos fanning their own hubris. Gods I’m sick of the endless billshit and name calling. Do you really think people facing tough times in this country are impressed with this shit? I’m not!
“The biting sarcasm wonderful”.
No, it was kiddie playground again, I thought we had been there and done that. Where are the real issues being addressed? This is not The Jerry Springer Show Yvonne, which you may enjoy, it’s our country,s parliament.
.
A place where the most serious of issues are debated.
Dear god help Australia as long as the ponces in Canberra continue on this path. Is there any wonder the rats are deserting the ship.
Been going on for years, Wraith, This is not new. Turnbull has been a gentleman actually, reluctant to hit back at the ”Mr Harbourside Mansion” jibes from Shorten. It was quite nice to see him get angry. It was a great tirade. Even Tanya was laughing. Lighten up.
Perhaps you missed the Labor mob laughing and mocking Turnbull when he acknowledged the Queen’s 65th Anniversary at the beginning of QT. It was awful and immature. What’s the difference between that behaviour and Turnbull’s retaliation?
Do you remember Keating in full throttle? Memorable. Tanya Plibersek was going on today about how much better Keating was at sledging than Turnbull. She was proud of him!
So no good crying wolf over Turnbull.
What goes around, comes around.
Can I get a reprise on your comments Wraith, when Julia Gillard let fly with her pathetic, contrived and preconceived misogyny speech levelled at Tony Abbott?
Wraith, I agree, but Turnbull needed to do something to show he’s got some zing and to take the heat off the fact that he and his cronies have what it takes, which they don’t.
I know there are some here (OK Milton) that detest Keating, but he really had the ability to stick it up the Opposition, make us laugh, but still get things done. Oh and then there were the days of Fred Daly and Jim Killen, who although from opposite sides were very funny and proved that nastiness and playing the man didn’t have a place in government if you needed to get things done. I only became politically aware in the days of Gough Whitlam, but believe our political leaders have become absolutely woeful after Bob Hawke, Keating and Howard.
Penny,
Gough was a master on the floor of parliament. As a political tragic I have read some of the stuff from that era. Daly and Killen to. You are 100% right. Their mastery of the English language allowed them not to have to resort to the pettiness of today’s parliament.
Sad it before Razor, but Whitlam used to give Killen a pair so he could go to law lectures. Contrast that to Abbott who wouldn’t give them for funerals!
these things are good for party morale, though a bit of a sugar hit, but like Julia’s whack at Tony Abbott didn’t save her prime ministership i doubt this will have much impact either.
In reference to my earlier comment:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/30/world/australia/australia-gay-men-killed-suicides-sydney.html?_r=0
And yes, I thought it a change to see Turnbull feisty (thanks to Yvonnes clip). He should have been like that with journo’s a long time back, rather than waffling nonsense. Yet, despite Shanahan’s fanciful piece suggesting this was a definitive moment in oz politics, I would suggest that on this occasion Shanahan is a nob. The reason being, everyone knows that Turnbull is a rich, arrogant tosser and that Shorten is a snivelling, vacillating, social climber. The sad thing for the Malcolm is that his passion in putting down Shorten would have been better used in articulating economic reform. Chopping the Gold pass, whilst good, is like knocking the top off!
Wake up and look around, Shanahan, lift your game (that or retire). That article was a nonsense.
I go to mass a bit. I don’t know why, but I front from time to time. I just hope there is something there. Not necessarily for me but for the billions who have prayed for thousands of years. That said, not once have I EVER heard our local Catholic priest offer prayers for the victims or the priests for that matter. Our bloke just pretends it never happened. And so do his assistants. Last year I had had enough and wrote to the Bishop. Not to dob the priest in but to ask if he had instructed his charges to offer prayers at least for the kids. He wrote back and said yes he had. A year later and I have never heard an offering and neither has my wife who never misses mass. Therein lies the problem. Its like climate change. The deniers don’t wanna know it is happening no matter what the evidence.
I wear a Mjorlnar and a st christophers, Bassman. Not because I believe in these gods but because I respect the traditions behind these things. I do not know if there are any gods but rational thinking says there cannot be. Nevertheless, if, for the sake of the point, I accept for the moment that gods exist then why should i accept that any human being can interpret the will of gods? That seems like the height of arrogance to me. It would be good if human beings – especially the “god fearing” human beings could accept that what they think is the will of gods is actually just their will and, if gods exist, they cannot ever understood those gods except, as Stephen Hawking pointed out, by studying their works. In the meantime, everything humans do on this earth is the will of those humans.
Hear, hear, DOB
Got me dazza. Had to google Mjlorlnar!
I guess I am agnostic because i wanna believe ‘something is out here’.. I won’t be gutless enough to beg for a priest on my deathbed though. That would be hypocrisy. I will say my own act of contrition privately, in my own way.
If we accept we did not exist before birth, why can’t we accept we will not exist after death?
Because we would then have to ask; ‘What’s the use?’
You’ve been like a dog with a bone on this one, Jack and thankfully so as I don’t see too many out there pursuing what is arguably a national shame, disgrace, call it what you will. Hard to say where the divide between authority, personal responsibility, parenting and the law got so horribly wrong. As I’ve mentioned my father was a soldier who rose relatively high, and I recall him saying to a teacher or principal words to the effect that if I misbehaved to give me a flogging. I doubt that would have been unusual in those days, regardless of occupation, though i could not guess at his reaction if i had the reason and the guts (and thankfully i did not need them) to tell him i’d been abused.
On reading the other side, the coin your hero and friend received, Jack is an insult. My mother (and i normally try to avoid the personal stuff unless relevant, so apologies) received, if i recall correctly, around $30-40 thousand a good time back as a result of her experience growing up in Nazareth House, Brisbane (as an orphan). She was not sexually abused, but denied a decent education and what most reasonable people would agree was subjected to psychological and physical abuse. Denis Ryan was foiled in his endeavours, what he thought was his job, and no doubt thought was his personal responsibilities, to put a stop to far more heinous crimes than my mother endured, only to be ostracised, isolated and out of not only a job but a promising career. 90k!! get f=d, compared to the super, etc the legalised crooks enjoyed.
The Police Association of Victoria hired an actuary to put a figure on Denis’s losses and came up with $3.2 million, much of it interest accumulated over 40-odd years. It’s not for me to say but I know Denis doesn’t want that sort of money. He might view a police pension in today’s money at his rank when he was pushed out as reasonable but no one has made the offer. Two things, on the day he gave evidence to the RC he was given a stirring round of applause in the courtroom. Not a dry eye in the house. Outside there was much back slapping. I fronted the Chief Commissioner of Police and asked him when he was going to apologise to Denis Ryan and he gave me a look like I could be locked up and charged with the disappearance of the Beaumont children. To Ashton’s credit he did offer his apologies privately to Ryan and publicly (sort of – I was not invited nor were any other journalists other than The Age’s John Sylvester) months later. There was a certain former Labor minister who introduced himself outside the courtroom who said it was his job to act as a conduit between the police and government to ensure that communication was open and Denis looked after. We haven’t heard from him since. Not a word. I have written to the government, the Police Min and AG requesting a meeting but have received no reply. If these people think Denis and I are going to quietly go away, they are in for a shock.
You see any smart government (and that may be a contradiction these days) would want to put their arm around Ryan. They can get a great deal of good publicity by settling this matter once and for all.
“any smart government”.
Ah-ha. There’s your problem. Victoria is not the place to look for one of those just now.
A police pension would be out of the question, JTI, becasue police officers hold their commission straight from the Queen (in theory) the system for police compensation simply isnt set up to treat police officers as ordinary employees.
Unless they have changed the rules since I worked in that area (about 24 years ago – but I believe the system is still creaking and useless) ALL compensation payments to police are ex gratis at the ABSOLUTE DISCRETION of the minister. While a pension is out of the question (because no government would commit to such a precedent) a gratis lump sum may not be. But youd have to work up a full submission setting out the grounds for compensation and it would have to be a good submission given the unusual circumstances. They often take years to go through and any such application would need to be accompanied by a bit of, how can I put it, “reputational threat” to the minister and the government.
Stop talking about things you know nothing about, Darren. The world-weary, been-there-done-that air of authority is especially irritating. Ryan has two QCs to call on and a raft of other lawyers acting pro bono. He’s right for legal advice, thanks.
No problems. Sorry, Peter.
I know what you are saying dazza but we both know if there is a political will to do something things can happen very quickly.
On the police pension front I don’t even know if they still exist in Victoria. It would probably be all tied up in government super funds and the ability to either take a lump sum, part lump sum and part pension or full pension dependent on your membership. Said pension being relevant to the amount of money you and your government department put in. Giving funds to a non-member would disadvantage current members and I imagine illegal. An exgratia payment would be the only way through and I hope the bloke gets a bloody big one!
Good onya, Jack. Keep at them. They cannot be allowed to get away with it.
Jack, through all the trials and tribulations faced by Denis Ryan, as so expressly details in your writings, there is one question I’ve been meaning to ask. This is in no way diminishing the crimes of the perpetrators, nor the suffering of the victims.
How do you describe his present being and state of mental health? How has he tolerated everything thrown at him and lived through it, especially as I imagine he would have lost a lot of mates along the way. Does he feel ostracised by society, through the funnel of the long blue line of policing?
Speak to him regularly and he is sharp in the mind and the body is in good nick. All the same he is 85, so further delays would be unforgivable.
A hell of a lot of coppers these days would think he is a hero Lou and love to shout him a beer. I know I do and would.
4444 still shocks me enough. I would have thought 150 shocking. What I can’t get, and I’ve mentioned this before, is what was in it for the police? When drugs, prostitution and perhaps other things are overlooked, or not seen by the police there is quid pro quo – money in both and occasionally sex in the latter. The police held something over those criminals heads and extracted from them. In this matter I find it hard to understand how a hardened cop would fail to provide safety and justice to a young child, and protect what I imagine then was considered complete degeneracy to say the least. From what I’ve read recently in the NYT back then poofter bashing was not something that police, at least in NSW, necessarily followed up on.
Many of them being devout Catholics themselves – possibly parishioners – may well have a big role in all of this, I’d’ve thought.
Bella, good comment. I agree a normal homosexual man (there will be those of course who don’t like the word “normal” applied to homosexuals of course) have no interest in young children. A friend of mine told me that when he mentioned to a friend of his that he is gay, she told him she could no longer invite him around to his place as she has two young boys ??
Another gay friend of mine is the Principal of a primary school and no-one bats an eyelid, parents included. Homosexuality and paedophilia are two different things.
Good comment, Penny. The principal at my kids early years education (till grade 4) was, is, homosexual and more camp than i! I will admit that i had some ingrained issues, considering my first born (6yrs older than the 2md) was attending his first school. Quite odd and conflicting for me as i have had many years working, befriending, socialising with gays, even drinking solo in soho in “those” places; to be honest I’ve preferred that “milieu” to the macho bar. But i grew out of my stupidity and the kids were blessed with an exceptional educator.
It’s strange, Penny as i consider myself reasonably open minded, objective even (shoosh JB!). and compared to a lot of people i know, drink with etc, on the matter of homosexuals i am, yet that concerned me. On your friends comment is it not akin to heterosexual men not being allowed to visit friends who have daughters?
There is depravity and it pays to be aware, not paranoid or worse looking for predators. As Jack has mentioned most sexual abuse of minors is at the hands of family members. And from a friend who was a teacher, he reckoned he could tell by observation children that had been abused, or neglected, in one way or the other.
as bassman would say, seriously sad and bad café.
Milton, great comment. This friend of mine is truly an outstanding educator. A few years ago when I was visiting Melbourne I was staying with friends who liked to listen to the appalling Neil Mitchell on 3AW. His issue of the day was that a teacher at the high school I had attended (years before) was undergoing a sex change. Despite the fact that the teacher had the support of the students, the parents and his colleagues, Mitchell was calling for this teacher to be sacked. He even named him! He spoke to the Principal and overrode everything he was saying by telling him he was putting the innocent lives of his students in the hands of a pervert……sigh
And as to your comment about heterosexual men not being able to visit friends with daughters, I don’t know , but I’ve got three granddaughters and I don’t recall any problems with heterosexual men visiting when they were younger. It’s now that they have all grown into beautiful young women, that we worry…..
On the latter I may not have made myself clear, Penny. Just because a man likes men, it does not follow that he would desire boys; the same with men who like women does not mean they desire girls. Heterosexual and homosexual alike are a different animal altogether than a paedophile.
And on your last point I’m glad that I don’t have daughters. they’d probably die from heat exhaustion having to wear spencers and petticoats etc!
Milton, no you did make yourself clear and what you say is correct, whatever your sexuality should not imply that you are automatically attracted to children.
Paedophiles are a different species entirely. Quite a few years ago now a friend of mine’s husband was accused of interfering with the neighbors young daughter. Now I don’t know if this was true or not, but the mother came to my office and told me she had proof that it happened. The upshot was that it went to court, my friend’s husband pleaded guilty…..apparently to ‘get the mother off their case’, they moved to another suburb and everything did go away.
But I still see these people when I go back to Darwin and never feel quite comfortable around him. They now have a young granddaughter……and I note she is never left alone with him.
It’s something that I know we all feel very strongly about and the child pornography industry is growing, I think we never really know what goes on in other people’s lives but the quicker we expose these revolting people the better. This Royal Commission has been a godsend.
I was referring to homosexuality as between adults in my comment. As, back then, homosexuality was very much in the closet.
The seminary is a males only environment.
I think Jack understood that and explained accordingly in his reply to my comnent.
Obviously homosexuality and paedophilia are two different things. What I was contemplating was that both could have been inducements to join the priesthood /brotherhood.
What kind of people ban homosexuals from anything?
The trouble with homophobic abuse is that it very often leads to suicides in the gay community and that’s a very real and tragic reflection of a so-called civilised society. How do I know?
I know this because my brother did make it through his youth despite years of suicidal thoughts coupled with countless bashings by Qld police in the vicinity of a gay club & he was made to pay large sums of cash to these ‘criminals’ if he and his friends didn’t want to be locked up at the station all night. That fear of police stays with you he says, and so does no respect for them. I hope those cops can’t sleep at night. Ever. My wonderful brother now holds a Masters in Social Work & councils young students at a Qld Uni, some still subjected to ongoing hateful slurs & violent abuse.
Your last sentence says everything Penny.
My best, Bella
“Homosexuality and paedophilia are two different things.” Not always Penny. There are some very degenerate homosexuals getting around. “A dead dog on a chain” comes to mind.
I could relate a story to you that happened to an immediate family member on that theme, but I won’t go into details in a public forum.
Well I read today in Queensland the church is a “law” unto themselves. Ably supported we see over generations. Command and control hey?