Have Catholic police in Victoria been tipping of the Church about investigations?

                                                  
The Age newspaper has been investigating the child abuse stories from the Catholic Church in Victoria Australia for some time. Not surprising really as it's a big story, and getting bigger.Currently the Victorian parliament has a Child Abuse investigation going on and hearing will start on the 19th  October

This article from The Age here is very worrying:-

The Age also reported earlier this month that a senior police investigator had told victims of a suspected Catholic paedophile of his ''grave'' concerns that his investigation into their alleged abuser was being derailed and that ''pro-church police members'' might have interfered in his inquiry.

Can you imagine that! Members of the Police force interfering with an investigation into the Catholic Church.  Please, also note it's hearsay, and includes the word "might". Of course on Sunday morning, Policeman goes to church......has a bit of a chat with the priest....


The letter from Waller Legal to the Child Abuse Investigation is particulary worth reading, here is a short extract:-

In a pastoral letter dated 1 July 2010 Archbishop Denis Hart said that 300
complaints had been dealt with in the Melbourne Archdiocese Response
process, an in-house sexual abuse complaints process. It seems that not one
of these was referred to the police.

I know this because recently the Victorian Police have criticised the Archdiocese of Melbourne for not eliciting the assistance of the police or referring allegations of sexual abuse for investigation, despite requests by the police to do so. Denis Hart has said that the 300 complaints related to 60 priests in the Melbourne Archdioceses.

Think about that for a moment: Sixty different priests in Melbourne are allegedto have committed sexual offences. There are at least 300 people who report being victims - these are just the matters that have been reported within the Archdiocese of Melbourne. Some individual victims have reported to the police, but the Church has not taken this initiative.

I know of no other community group, school, business, company, government agency or volunteer organisation who could preside over such astonishing and horrifying statistics and yet consider themselves to be above the law or somehow separate to it. Any responsible CEO of a company, the president of a football or social club or the manager of a community group would seek the assistance of the police to investigate known or suspected criminal activity of such a scale.

Click on the video below to see a short movie about how the Catholic Church has historically had a problem with child rape.

Here is the  website of  Inquiry into the Handling of Child Abuse by Religious and Other Organisations

A PDF of the police submission to the Child Abuse Investigation

A PDF of the Waller Legal submission to the Child Abuse Investigation

Oh..This is new to me http://www.verschueren.at/International_sexual_abuse_newsmonitor.html

In some circumstances the Church has alerted the alleged offender to an a police investigation. This happened as recently as 2009. In this instance it was evident that by the time police had arrived  that evidence had been removed or destroyed -Police Submission to Child Abuse Investigation

The Purple Economy - A book review

    

                                                                             

   Max Wallace has authored a book that lays out how Australia, and (almost only Australia) keeps the Churches on side with Government with these particular Tax deductions and handouts.

The first part of the book demolishes any ideas about separation of church  and state in Australia.
In the 1998 DOGS case (Defence of Government Schools), the high court decided there was no separation of church and state in Australia.

This is why we  had  Peter Hollingworth  an Anglican Archbishop as Governor General, and the Government can fund Chaplains in Australian schools.

Even though the Australian constitution is almost exactly written and intended to be the same in the church/state regard as the USA, it has a single word different, and that was enough for the High Court to determine their is no separation.

Looking back over 100 years to the founding of the Australian Commonwealth can't be easy, and parts of the constitution will have been taken from many models, but our interest is in Section 116.

I won't reproduce it here, as the wikipedia entry is quite through. But the interpretation of the meaning separation of Church and State is one that needs to be investigated, e.g.  What does it all mean?

 Some think it means that the State looks after the government of the people, and religion is just something funded by believers and and those particular principles of belief are just for themselves. This is how secularism works, and certainly the most desirable in modern society (until the human race grows up). This is the French model.

Some think it means the government will not establish a State Church, as it exists now in England. This is how the courts have interpreted the situation  in Australia.

Some think it means that the Government will not tax you to pay for the support of a religions that you don't believe in. The situation in Germany, Denmark  and Sweden, is actually much like this. The Government taxes it's citizens on behalf of their church.

Italy has the Tax Eight Per Thousand

In the US, the principle is that the state does not subsidise religion, also
Everyone is free to exercise their religion.
Religion can't be imposed on anyone.
There is no religious test for government positions.
There is no State religion.

Nice theory, but for those in the USA, this NYT article will probably interest you your separation of Church and state is slowly being eroded, your taxes going to support the religious, and civil laws being exempted for their benefit.

This is exactly what is happening in Australia, the taxes the church doesn't pay on it's profit making activities is made up by taxes the rest of the population pay. Australian Government money goes to religious schools, these schools that were setup precisely to be outside the government system, and to promote the religious views of the respective churches 

But to sum it up, Australian Church / State separation is a DOGS breakfast, and the importance of the DOGS case takes some pages to go over in the book

So again it comes down to money, I have covered this before in my post about the lack of a Charity Commission in Australia

The Business Review Weekly estimated in 2005 the 5 biggest religious groups in the country had a revenue of A$23.3 Billion. It is summarised in this PDF from the Australian and New Zealand law and History journal  and this page at the ADOGS website

The BRW also claim the Catholic Church is the biggest landowner in Australia, I can't confirm this, and finding out for certain is beyond my resources, as part of the problem is the parish systems and the different Australian states. The Catholic Church is spread across 200 religious orders, and if the comments by an ex-member of Opus Dei are to be believed, the accountants are completely disorganised, and it's very likely the Church doesn't know what it actually owns, and probably prefers it that way


The Second part is about Religion and Government

How much has religious thinking affected those we elect to Government?
In the last decade a National day of Thanks Giving has been informally held, although I have no idea how popular it is compared to Talk like a Pirate day.
Peter Costello is certainly keen on it, and even likes to make the occasional speech , John Howard was also keen to support  this day of intellectual fiction.

So how is the  Australian Government records for doing what is best for it's citizens, instead of furthering the Christian agenda?

•  2005 was a year to remember for the drug RU486, Tony Abbott showed his contempt for women by trying to have it restricted/banned, but it was made available during a conscience vote, it was noticeable the overwhelming number of woman in parliament voted for it.

• The lack of a Royal Commission into priestly Child Abuse.

• Sale of a radio transmitter to a fundamentalist Christian group so they can send their signals into Asia (Station is now closed)

• 20 Million gift for a World Youth Day, with the pope in attendance, but nothing for the World Atheist Conference in 2010.                                                              

• Of course there is also the Chaplains, a social/psychological disaster just waiting to happen.                                                                                                      

• Religious businesses are exempt from anti-discrimination laws. 

• Continual disregard for the establishment of a Charity Commission 

 
Much of the book then goes in to the murky world of Charities and Government, and some comparisons of how other countries handle the relationship. Then continues with how some MPs deal with their religious convictions and the rest of the community, and the Liberal Governments attack on the human rights of citizens.

One thing Max Wallace says in a minor paragraph is how Dr Carmen Lawrence received hate mail and death threats when she spoke about Hill$ong Church in Parliament. This reminded me about this video of Richard Dawkins reading his hate mail. Ben Goldacre the author of Bad Science, just said on twitter that he does get abusive hate mail, and it would surprise many who it's from.


The book also has a short section on Black Collar Crime, and notes the Catholic Church had documention called On the manner of proceeding in cases of the crimes of solicitation in 1962 to advise on how to move Priests around, and threaten excommunication on anyone who made claims public. 

This is the first time I have re-read a book immediately, it's full of shocking details of things that I never knew, but then again I have never been exposed to Religion. This was where I first heard of the Magdalene Laundries, and how they operated in Australia at least in the 1940s, and only due to the intervention of a "miracle" they didn't come to public notice at that time.  

The Purple Economy is available from Embiggen Books

Notes:-
Australian Industry Commissions 1995 report (PDF) Charitable Organisations in Australia

The Catholic Church also gets income from Peters Pence.
It's only $US84 Million, but it's likely it goes into the Vatican bank, an organization with alleged links to the Mafia, a fencer of Nazi gold, and money laundering potentially even more corrupt than banks are generally supposed to be.(I take note that the Vatican Bank is the subject of many conspiracy theories, so anything written about it is highly suspect)


Do you know why I have credibility? Because I don't exude morality -- Bob Hawke

What is Black Collar Crime?

 Thanks to http://tirelesswing.blogspot.com/ for the title picture.

                I believe the first use of the  term "Black Collar Crime " comes from the Australian group Broken Rites who began operation in 1993, when the victims realized the absence of any support for the victims of Church based abuse coming from the Church. This was when the realization that the hierarchy of those Churches are really only interested in protecting their own Priests/Ministers. But it was not yet clear just how much the churches where covering up for their own.


Currently the US based Freedom From Religion Foundation publish the Black Collar Crime Blotter  that tracks and monitors crimes committed by those involved in the churches,  it's very US based but does have the occasional story from Australia and Europe. Locally the site  http://www.tor.id.au/ is updated regularly and is more Australian centric, while also concentrating on the Catholic Church.

http://www.clergyabuseaustralia.org/ is a site from a survivor of Clerical Abuse, it's quite personal, has links to help groups, books and resources. but does not look to have been updated for some time.

For those people that have been through abuse and wish to network with others Survivors Australia are quite active.

Recently the Pope commented the current church scandals are because of the change in society in the 1960s. But that would mean there was no abuse before the 1960s wouldn't it?

So lets see...

After WW2, Britain, as did most countries, had a lot of orphans,  so here begins another chapter of the child migrants to the Empire. This is probably a story unknown outside Commonwealth countries, but the national Library of Australia has a short paper on it here. But, basically children as young as three were sent out to Australia, Rhodesia, Canada, and New Zealand, with the idea they would be leaving Britain behind to go to orphanages and possibly families for a better life. But on arrival they where generally used as a cheap labour force. In fact the Christian Brothers used the children as labours to construct the buildings they all lived in.

A support group for the Forgotten Australians has been formed. But without going in to much detail, again it's a story of the supposedly Godly members of our society abusing those to young to defend themselves. This was first brought to the attention of the public with the 1989 book  Lost Children of the Empire that was later made into a film.

Just this story would prove the lie about the Pope claim.

Andrew Murray was an Australian Senator, as well as a child migrant, he writes a history of the recent events of this incredibly sad story, concentrating on the despicable history of the Christian Brothers.

For more information on Child Migrants the Child Migrants Trust should be your first call. But it's one of  the most shameful events in Australian history

Finally, the EROS foundation have a site on Clerical Abuse, I can't say how accurate it is, and it looks not to be updated for sometime. Also the Foundation is very much Pro-Porn, as the Churches are against it. While some of the information on here would be useful, I can't help thinking it also has another agenda.

The Christian Brothers is looking to be a blog post by itself, it's evil activities have been all over the world, currently the Irish are investigating them quite closely.



As men's prayers are a disease of the will so are their creeds a disease of the intellect.-
Ralph Waldo Emerson