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

Wikileaks :- VATICAN ACKNOWLEDGES SEXUAL ABUSE BY PRIESTS

                                                                           
 

Reference ID	Created	Released	Classification	Origin
01VATICAN1615	2001-03-23 13:28	2011-08-24 01:00	UNCLASSIFIED//FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY	Embassy Vatican

This record is a partial extract of the original cable. The full text of the 

original cable is not available.

-------------------------------------------- 
VATICAN ACKNOWLEDGES SEXUAL ABUSE BY PRIESTS 
-------------------------------------------- 
 
¶5.   (SBU) IN A RARE STATEMENT ACKNOWLEDGING FAULT, VATICAN 
SPOKESMAN JOAQUIN NAVARRO-VALLS SAID MARCH 20 THAT THERE WAS 
A PROBLEM OF SEXUAL ABUSE OF NUNS BY PRIESTS IN SOME 
MISSIONARY TERRITORIES. HE SAID THE VATICAN WAS WORKING TO 
CORRECT THE SITUATION. THE STATEMENT WAS IN RESPONSE TO A 
MARCH 16 ARTICLE IN U.S. CATHOLIC WEEKLY, NATIONAL CATHOLIC 
REPORTER THAT CITED FOUR REPORTS BY SENIOR MEMBERS OF 
WOMEN'S RELIGIOUS ORDERS ASSERTING THAT SEXUAL ABUSE OF NUNS 
BY PRIESTS, INCLUDING RAPE, WAS A SERIOUS PROBLEM, 
 
                       UNCLASSIFIED 
 
PAGE 05        VATICA  01615  01 OF 02  231320Z 
 
                       UNCLASSIFIED 
 
                           UNCLASSIFIED     PTO7054 
 
PAGE 01        VATICA  01615  02 OF 02  231320Z 
ACTION EUR-00 
 
INFO  LOG-00   NP-00    AF-00    ACQ-00   CA-02    CIAE-00  USNW-00 
      DODE-00  DOEE-00  DS-00    EAP-00   FBIE-00  UTED-00  VC-00 
      H-01     TEDE-00  INR-00   IO-00    L-00     VCE-00   M-00 
      AC-01    NEA-00   NSAE-00  OCS-03   OES-01   OIC-02   PA-00 
      PM-00    ACE-00   P-00     SCT-00   SP-00    IRM-00   SSO-00 
      SS-00    TEST-00  T-00     USIE-00  R-00     SNIS-00  NISC-00 
      PMB-00   DSCC-00  DRL-02   G-00     NFAT-00  SAS-00     /012W 
                  ------------------D63E4F  231330Z /38 
R 231328Z MAR 01 
FM AMEMBASSY VATICAN 
TO SECSTATE WASHDC 0000 
INFO EUROPEAN POLITICAL COLLECTIVE 
AMEMBASSY TEL AVIV 
AMCONSUL JERUSALEM 
AMEMBASSY SEOUL 
NSC WASHDC 
 
UNCLAS SECTION 02 OF 02 VATICAN 001615 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SENSITIVE 
 
DEPT. FOR EUR/WE (VAN CLEVE), EUR/SE, EAP/K, NEA/IAI, 
 
EUR/PD/PA, AF/E, AF/W, AF/S, DRL/IRF 
 
FROM EMBASSY VATICAN/MESSAGE NO. 48/01 
                       UNCLASSIFIED 
 
PAGE 02        VATICA  01615  02 OF 02  231320Z 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: PREL PHUM SOCI IS GR KN KS PHUM SOCI IS GR KN KS VT MEPP VTPREL MEPP
SUBJECT: VATICAN - "VIEWS FROM THE HILL" 
 
ESPECIALLY IN AFRICA. ONE OF THE AUTHORS TOLD A VATICAN CITY 
NEWS AGENCY THAT SHE WAS VERY PLEASED THE VATICAN HAD ISSUED 
ITS ACKNOWLEDGEMENT. (COMMENT: THE VATICAN HAS BECOME 
INCREASINGLY SENSITIZED TO INCIDENTS OF SEXUAL ABUSE BY 
CLERGY, PARTICULARLY IN COUNTRIES LIKE THE US, AUSTRALIA AND 
ENGLAND. WE EXPECT THE REPORTS OF SEXUAL ABUSE BY PRIESTS IN 
MISSIONARY TERRITORIES TO BE TAKEN SERIOUSLY AND DEALT WITH 
PROFESSIONALLY. END COMMENT). MERANTE 

"The best justification governments can find to shut down information isthat lives are at risk. In fact, 

lives have been at risk as a result of the silences and lies revealed in these leaks." -- Jemima Khan 

Even more reports on Catholic Child abuse in Ireland

Wednesday 13th of July, The long-awaited Cloyne Report has been published, detailing how the Catholic Church and the state authorities dealt will allegations of abuse in the County Cork diocese between the years 1996  to early 2000.

The report’s main points:

    The “greatest failure” of the diocese was the failure to report cases of abuse to the civil authorities: the diocese failed to alert the Gardaí about nine out of 15 cases that “very clearly” should have been reported. 

    The Vatican was “entirely unhelpful” in assisting clerics wishing to implement procedures – describing the guidelines as “a study document”.

 The response of the Diocese of Cloyne was “inadequate and inappropriate".

  Primary responsibility for the failure to implement agreed child sexual abuse procedures lies with then-bishop of Cloyne John Magee.  Bishop Magee "took little or no active interest" in the management of clerical child sexual abuse cases until 2008, 12 years after the framework document on child sexual abuse was agreed by the Irish Bishops' Conference.

An American watchdog group BishopAccountability.org said the handling of clerical abuse cases in Cloyne is “eerily similar” to a US grand jury report released earlier this year, which found church leaders showed a “brazen disregard” for both civil law and the church’s own internal policies.

“The Cloyne report is disheartening confirmation that even today, despite the church's knowledge of the profound anguish of thousands of victims, its reform policies are public relations ploys, not true child protection programs,” the group said.

The Boston-based organisation asked: "how many second chances will Irish church officials get before they are criminally charged for enabling the molestation of children?"

This is the fourth report into Child abuse committed by the Catholic Church in Ireland.

•  The first was the Ferns Report  published in October 2005.
• The Second was Ryan Report Published in May 2009.
• The Third was Murphy Report Published in November 2009.

The main focus of the report Bishop Magee who resigned in March 2009  to spend the rest of his life in some comfortable house paid for by the donations of the shorn flock.

Each report shows that the Catholic Church was only really interested in keeping it's power, and was totally arrogant in the way it dealt with the abuse being inflicted by it's priests.

So then again showing the Vatican is only a power structure, lacking in any form of any moral courage or authority.
It also shows another failure of the Irish Government to do what is best for it's citizens, and shows why letting the Catholic Church to be the defacto 2nd Governent in the Irish Republic is such a very very bad idea.

It’s an incredible con job when you think about it, to believe something now in exchange for something after death. Even corporations with their reward systems don’t try to make it posthumous. — Gloria Steinem

Black Collar Crime in Germany

From a Press Conference given by Marion Westphal last Friday, the comments in italics are mine.

Munich - Germany's Catholic church systematically covered up cases of sexual abuse within its own ranks for several decades, according to an expert study of the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising, presented Friday.

The lawyer commissioned by the Archdiocese to conduct the study, Marion Westphal, said its records revealed huge gaps between 1945 and 2009.
(So what about pre 1945, or are the records distroyed?)

Westphal described a 'systematic system of cover-up,' in which few abuse cases were criminally prosecuted.
'Only 26 priests were convicted for sexual offences,' Westphal added.
'We have to assume there is a large unknown number (of abuse cases),' the lawyer said. 'We are dealing with the extensive destruction of files.'(Maybe eaten by Rats?)
She said the records were also severely lacking during the years of 1977 to 1982, when the diocese was led by Archbishop Josef Ratzinger - who is now Pope Benedict XVI.

During this period, she only found a single document, regarding an abuse case that Ratzinger himself had dealt with, Westphal said. The file contained a letter from Ratzinger, insisting that an abusive priest be removed from his parish.
Westphal said church employees destroyed records of abuse cases because they were more concerned with avoiding a scandal than protecting the victims.
    (So nothing new here)

The study involved more than 13,200 files, of which 365 contained evidence that 'acts of abuse had taken place in an almost commonplace manner,' Westphal said.
These cases implicated 159 priests as well as 15 deacons, 96 religion teachers and six pastoral employees. Rural areas were particularly affected, the lawyer said.

Some of the files were stowed away in private apartments, others were locked away in places that few had authority to access. Criminal verdicts were not included in the files out of principle.
(It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying "Beware of The Leopard".' -- Douglas Adams.) 

In many cases the victims' suffering could only be guessed at, Westphal said, as the files described reported abuse in evasive language.
She insisted the church had given her free rein in her research.
Munich's Archbishop Reinhard Marx said this year's revelations of sexual abuse by clerics had come as a shock.
'For me, these were surely the worst months of my life. I felt shame, grief and dismay,' Marx said.
(Getting caught does that to everyone )

Thanks to Dw-world.de


The Christian Brothers were fairly mangled fellows in Navan. Some men speak highly of them. Unfortunately I never saw that. I just remember the brutality. The Paddtbats, the straps that would fly out of the soutane like vipers' tongues, the beatings amidst the prayers - whack!
Pierce Brosnan