Catholics launch new anti-abuse push

THE Catholic Church is launching a sexual abuse campaign urging the faithful to be "aware" but not "overly suspicious".

THE Catholic Church is opening a new front in the campaign against sexual abuse with the launch a national prevention plan in parishes and schools urging the faithful to be "aware" but not "overly suspicious".

Arguing that children are at "greater risk than ever before through internet communication", it asks Catholics to willingly undertake any police checks required by state and church agencies; to abide by codes of conduct and follow risk assessment procedures; and to be a personally committed to ensuring the church is a safe community for everyone.

The campaign includes the distribution to all Catholics of pocket-sized cards listing eight actions including being "aware of the possibilities of abuse, not overly suspicious"; trusting instincts which indicate something may be wrong; avoiding gossip, but reporting problems; and being open to acquiring a "deeper understanding" of the harm abuse causes.

"A lot of people do not believe there are long-term effects of abuse," the author of the strategy, Sister Angela Ryan said.

These include guilt, shame, grief, anger, sexual dysfunction and low self-esteem, leading to debilitation.

As prevention and protection officer for the church's National Committee of Professional Standards, Sister Ryan has been working on the plan for a year.

"We have done a lot of preventative things with our code of conduct, work with priests, the religious, and those who work with children, but this is going further, aiming at having everybody involved," she said.

"Everybody who is part of the Catholic Church is being asked to become more aware and alert. I considered what the ordinary person needs to know. I tried to write in such a way that you do not need a professional psychological background to understand it."

The source document provided through the parishes includes a detailed breakdown of how predators "groom" their potential victims.

After gaining trust, abusers test whether the child will keep small secrets, then advance to "sexual talk" with them and initial touching, then threaten the child not to tell anyone, at which point the child is trapped.

"It is what people don't know and I have learned through experience," Sister Ryan said.

Other parts of the document highlight the problems of the past. "We have learned that in virtually every case of sexual abuse there are individuals who sense or recognise that there is a problem, often long before abuse is disclosed and that most of the time, they fail to take action," the document says.

"This is ... because they may not understand their intuitions or they do not know how to respond or with whom to consult."

The launch comes in the lead up to Child Protection Week, early next month, and parishes will be asked to focus on the issue on Sunday, September 9.

After a successsion of scandals the church apologised in 1996 to the those people who had been abused while in its pastoral care.