Stories still to emerge from darkness of sex abuse

This is criminality on a scale previously unimagined. What other organisation has bred so many sex offenders? And what other organisation would be arrogant or powerful enough to hide so many of its crimes?

For the royal commission, which has forced these figures out into the open, it feels as if everything has led to this point.

The commission was established amid a welter of reports of Catholic child abuse during 2012. Since then, over the course of 15 public hearings, we have heard from priests, bishops, archbishops and, repeatedly, from Australia’s most influential Catholic, Cardinal George Pell.

At times, some of these church officials have privately bucked against this ceaseless focus on their actions, saying they have been targeted unfairly by the commissioners. Yesterday’s revelations, the sheer numbers of those ­involved, show that attention was entirely justified.

We learned that 4444 people have come forward since 1980 saying they were abused at the hands of Australia’s Catholic clergy. Their ­average age when the abuse took place was between 10 and 11.

One measure of the criminality involved is that few, if any, crimes cause so much damage to its ­victims. Many struggle to trust others, to fall in love or to be parents. Some block out their memories with alcohol or drugs. Others commit suicide. Entire families are pulled into the darkness.

Another measure is the fact these crimes were committed by adults against children — by those people believed to have been the closest to God against the weakest, the most vulnerable and those most susceptible to harm.

What worries me is how much we still don’t know. Child abuse is a crime surrounded by silence. Ashamed and terrified, it takes 33 years on average for its victims to speak out.

The Catholic Church says it has reformed, and will continue to reform. Will those reforms work? We will have to ask our children.