Testimony shows church’s grave failings

With the exception of one word – “good” – this quote perfectly sums up the ongoing Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

Day after day of heart-wrenching and anger-inducing testimony demonstrates that men in power did nothing to protect society’s most vulnerable from harm.

These men – men of the cloth, men of high standing, men of intellect – ceased being good men the moment they turned a blind eye to the abuses occurring.

The testimony of Father Lawrence O’Toole highlights the appalling – no, criminal – attitude that allowed child sexual abuse to flourish for decades across central Victoria.

Fr O’Toole told the Royal Commission he was more likely to report a priest he suspected of stealing from the church’s coffers than one he suspected of abusing children.

Even when in 1988 he listened to a hospital bed disclosure of one of notorious paedophile Gerard Ridsdale’s numerous victims he failed to report it to authorities.

Instead Fr O’Toole, a man entrusted with the exalted responsibility of carrying out Christ’s work on Earth, hid behind his sacred vows, rather than lived up to them.

He argued the victim’s words amounted to a confession, therefore he was bound by the Catholic church’s “confessional seal” to keep it secret.

“Well, I would believe that he was old enough and man enough to be able to do that himself,” he told the inquiry when asked to explain why he had not reported the allegations to police.

“From my point of view, I would have felt that I was acting as a priest and freeing him. Trying to free him of any guilt he may have and any shame.”

What absolute rot. What possible guilt or shame should an adult carry for the abuses committed upon him as a child?

This victim was preyed upon by a man whose crimes were known to the powers-that-be in the church and yet their response was merely to shunt him from parish to parish across central Victoria.

The Catholic church’s reputation has taken an almighty battering – if not been completely destroyed – by the revelations at the inquiry. Its reluctance to accept responsibility for its sins places the very institution in question.

- Ross Tyson, deputy editor