Stephen
Woods was 11 when he was first abused by a teacher at his Roman
Catholic primary school in Ballarat, Victoria.
Robert Best, from the
Christian Brothers religious order, would take him to his office and
molest him, "while all the time telling me that I was bad and it was my
fault".
Another
Christian Brother, Edward Dowlan, abused him at a boys' boarding school
and when Mr Woods, troubled and confused, later sought advice from the
Catholic Church, he was introduced to Gerald Risdale, who raped him in a
public toilet by Lake Wendouree, in Ballarat. He was 14.
All
three men, who had multiple victims, were eventually jailed by the
Australian authorities, but Mr Woods, now 51, remains furious at the way
the Church concealed their actions.
Risdale was moved from parish to
parish, and Victoria police later concluded that the bishop of Ballarat,
Ronald Mulkearns, had known about his behaviour as far back as the
1970s.
Despite that, Risdale was allowed to continue in the ministry
until his arrest in 1993.
It is this type of systemic failing that
a royal commission, announced last week by Julia Gillard, the
Australian prime minister, is to address. It will focus not only on the
Roman Catholic Church - which, as in other countries such as Ireland and
Germany, has been plagued by child-abuse scandals - but on other
religious and state institutions, such as schools, orphanages and Scout
groups.
Calls had been mounting following allegations by a senior
detective, chief inspector Peter Fox, of rampant abuse and cover-ups in
one Catholic diocese north of Sydney. In an open letter published in the
Newcastle Herald this month, Insp Fox wrote that the Church "covers up,
silences victims, hinders police investigations, alerts offenders,
destroys evidence and moves priests to protect the good name of the
Church".
Ms Gillard's decision to order a national inquiry
reflects her belief that the problem is not confined to one area, or to
the Church. However, some commentators have questioned the wisdom of
widening it, predicting it will take at least five years and be
extremely costly. A national inquiry into child abuse in the Church in
Ireland lasted nine years.
"They should have focused on the
Catholic Church," said Kevin Lee, a former priest who was forced to move
parish in Sydney after complaining about a fellow priest. "Instead,
it's a case of 'let's shoot a shotgun at everybody and hope we hit
somebody'."
While victims welcomed the royal commission - Mr Woods
said he was "dancing for joy" - some were concerned by the reaction of
Cardinal George Pell, the Archbishop of Sydney and head of the Church in
Australia. Cardinal Pell, who had previously dismissed a royal
commission as unnecessary, accused the media of "exaggerating … the
extent of misdoing", and said the inquiry would "separate fact from
fiction".
The primate of the Anglican Church, Archbishop Phillip
Aspinall, said he had requested a royal commission 10 years ago, but the
prime minister at the time, John Howard, had declined.
The
inquiry, expected to begin early next year, was welcomed by former
pupils abused at a Jewish school in Melbourne, and by former residents
of state-run children's homes.
The Catholic Church does not deny
covering up paedophilia in the past, but said things have changed since
new protocols were put in place in 1997.
That is disputed by
Patrick Parkinson, a law professor at the University of Sydney, whom the
church commissioned to review the protocols. He said that sexual abuse
was still being covered up as recently as 2005.
Prof Parkinson
discovered that the Church had allowed three members of the Salesian
order - who work with the young and poor boys - against whom allegations
had been made, to travel or remain overseas.
When he wrote a
report on the cases, it was suppressed.
"There is a real issue about the
level of cooperation between the Church and the police, and the extent
to which the Church sees itself as being bound by the laws of the
country," he told The National. Comprehensive studies, he said, revealed
that abuse within the Catholic Church was "something like six times as
high as all the other churches put together".
Across Australia,
191 complaints had been made against Anglican clergy, curates and youth
workers since 1990. Within the Catholic Church, there were 620 cases in
Victoria alone.
"With that level of differential, you've got to ask some
serious questions about celibacy, and about a church which tends to
deal with everything behind closed doors and has a deeply ingrained
culture of trying to keep things away from the criminal justice system,"
said Prof Parkinson.
"I believe that huge changes have occurred,
and my feeling is that churches are generally very safe places now for
kids. But the Catholic Church remains as the festering wound."