40pc of one Catholic order’s brothers ‘allegedly abusers’

Child abuse took place on an unmatched scale within the Catholic Church, a royal commission report says.

The revelation of the number of abusers and victims, published yesterday by a royal commission and drawn from the Catholic Church’s own files, is without international ­precedent.

Child abuse took place on an unmatched scale within the Catholic Church, with more than one in 10 priests in dioceses nationwide, and 40 per cent of those in one religious order, identified as alleged offenders over recent decades.

The revelation of the number of abusers and victims, published yesterday by a royal commission and drawn from the church’s own files, is without international ­precedent and marked a day of reckoning for the church.

Francis Sullivan, chief executive of the church’s Truth, Justice and Healing Council, broke down in tears before the commissioners as he said “these numbers are shocking, they are tragic and they are indefensible”.

Coming after years of other damning evidence uncovered by the commission, the figures reveal “a misguided determination by leaders at the time to put the interests of the church ahead of the most vulnerable and a corruption of the gospel the church seeks to profess”, Mr Sullivan said. “As ­Catholics, we hang our heads in shame.”

In total, 4444 people came forward to say they had been abused as children between 1980 and 2015, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse heard yesterday. ­Almost 1900 alleged perpetrators were identified during this time, while more than 500 others are thought to have committed child abuse but have not yet been ­identified.

Seven per cent of Catholic priests working across Australia since the 1950s were alleged perpetrators, the commission heard. This compares with between 1 and 2 per cent of the general male population who have been convicted for sexual offences, including against adults.

In many dioceses and religious orders the figure is even higher. Forty per cent of St John of God Brothers, who ran boarding schools for boys with learning difficulties across Victoria and NSW, were alleged offenders. More than one in five of the Christian Brothers and Marist Brothers, who founded many schools across the country, were also alleged perpetrators, the figures reveal.

More than one in 10 priests were alleged child abusers in the dioceses of Wollongong and ­Lismore in NSW, Sandhurst and Sale in Victoria, and Port Pirie in South Australia, over this time.

Thousands of those who have been abused by Catholic clergy or in Catholic institutions have given evidence in private to the commission since it began work in 2013, representing almost 40 per cent of those who have done so to date.

The commission yesterday began a three-week hearing that will attempt to establish which cultural and institutional factors have produced this high rate of abuse.

“Children were ignored or, worse, punished. Allegations were not investigated. Priests … were moved … Documents were not kept or they were destroyed,” counsel assisting the commission, Gail Furness SC, said yesterday.

“The Catholic Church’s structure and governance, including the role of the Vatican … may have contributed to the occurrence of the abuse and certainly the institutional response to it.”

The cover-up, or unwillingness of church leaders to confront ­reports of child abuse, has been a theme throughout the 15 public hearings the commission has held into the church over the past four years. Evidence before the commission shows senior figures in the Christian Brothers order were aware its members might be abusing children as early as 1919. One witness, Father Thomas Doyle, is expected to give evidence to the current hearing, saying sexual abuse has been “a known reality in the Catholic Church since the first century”.

The Vatican has repeatedly refused the commissioners’ requests for documents about alleged pedophile priests within Australia, saying it was “neither possible nor appropriate to provide the information”, the commission heard.

Two members of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, Cardinal Sean O’Malley and Baroness Shelia Hollins, declined to give evidence in person at the current hearing, Ms Furness said. One victim of child sexual abuse by a Catholic priest, who has spent years trying to get the Vatican to recognise his claim, said yesterday its officials often hung up on him when he tried to call about the case. “It’s a society of ­secrecy. It’s frustrating ... It’s being abused over and over every day by the Vatican because they won’t ­acknowledge you. I just keep telling them that I’m there, that I’m there,” he told The Australian.

Earlier this month, the bishops of Wollongong and Sale, where 12 per cent and 15 per cent of priests since the 1950s allegedly abused children, wrote to their congregations apologising for the damage done, and saying the church had reformed, and would continue to reform.

“When … I think of the changed rules and regulations and policies and procedures, manuals and guidelines ... I don’t trust it,” ­another witness, Aquinas Academy director Michael Whelan, told the commission yesterday.

“To be perfectly honest, I really think this (is) deeply embedded, if we don’t get to this cultural issue ... None of those guidelines or rules (will) make a lot of difference.”

Additional reporting: Rhian Deutrom