Clare’s blog, aka rantspace

If churches really wanted to deal properly with sexual abuse by clergy and church workers, they could issue the following compulsory directives:
1. All complainants must be advised to seek police opinion on whether any part of their abuse constitutes a crime (it is neither appropriate for a church nor within the church’s areas of speciality to be providing an opinion on criminality). If police proceedings are instigated, the perpetrator should be immediately stood down for the duration of the investigation, and the parish notified as to the reason.
2. No perpetrator can be moved to another parish as part of handling the complaint.
3. No church moneys may be used to support perpetrators defending themselves against accusations of sexual abuse.
4. Victims must be offered open-ended therapy by therapists of their choice, paid for by the church until the therapist and victim deem treatment is completed.
5. All credible accusations must be made public and the perpetrators defrocked.
6. All perpetrators convicted of a crime of violence (including sexual abuse) should be immediately defrocked.
7. No perpetrator may be allowed to resign from the church during (or as a way of avoiding) an investigation into an allegation of misconduct. If the perpetrator has already resigned at the time of complaint, the investigation must still proceed, and the findings be notified to the appropriate body under Working With Children legislation.

Obviously, the directives would need to be issued by authoritative bodies, which vary according to denominational structures. In the Catholic Church, for instance, the Pope could do it. In the Anglican Church, each diocesan synod would be the relevant body. In denominations with congregational structures, each congregation would have to do it. But whoever decrees it, and however it is done, such decrees would show that they are really serious about eradicating abuse within their ranks, and providing care and concern for victims.

Any suggestions for additions to the list?

Cardinal Pell is, as we all know, all over the pages of the press again – this time for a “badly worded” letter (his words) that just happens to have come across as denial of an abuse victim’s allegations and the ongoing problem with the priest in question. You can read about it in more detail here and here and here. Quite apart from the questionable plausibility of his claim that though church lawyers had the tape evidence of the incident being non-consensual from 2005 they didn’t happen to mention it to him, to have dismissed the claim a) on the grounds of consensuality, and b) on the offender’s word, is both stupid and immoral. By 2002, when Anthony Jones brought his complaint to the church for the second time, church authorities had absolutely no excuse for accepting an alleged offender’s word unquestioningly. (And it must have been unquestioning, because it was directly opposed to the church’s own internal investigator’s assessment.) Moreover, it would appear that to Pell consensual homosexual sex between priest and parishioner is ok – which flies in the face of 1) his own conservative anti-gay stance, 2) the clearly understood power imbalance between clergy and parishioners, and 3) the priest being supposed to be celibate.

(Aside: How come politicians who support homosexuality and/or abortion bills get threatened by Pell with denial of communion, but a gay priest doesn’t?)

But what we must not forget is that this wriggling out of negative publicity on abuse issues is not the first time Pell has had to do so. It’s only a few years since he flatly denied that the church ever imposed gag orders (confidentiality agreements) on victims settling abuse claims – a denial he also had to make excuses for when the Daily Telegraph printed a double-page spread showing photos of the very gag orders Pell denied existed. His excuses then had a similar ring: the lawyers didn’t tell me, I really meant well, look at all I’ve done for abuse victims.

I know of at least one other instance, in 1994, when Pell’s assistant wrote to a victim denying prior knowledge or earlier correspondence with a victim of a De La Salle brother, but the then-head of the De La Salle order said that Pell had previously contacted him after receiving the complaint.

And further back still, when Gerald Ridsdale was at the height of his abusive career (for details, see his entry in my perpetrator list), Pell declared he knew nothing of Ridsdale’s activities, despite the abuse being common knowledge, and Pell sharing the presbytery – where many of the abuses happened – with Ridsdale for a year. Ridsdale has been convicted of multiple counts against 47 boy victims. Presumably Pell was either blind or stupid, or he turned a blind eye.

(Note: A fuller treatment of the Pell/Ridsdale links can be found here.)

How many times can one man be proven to have lied when he said “I didn’t know” and “I meant well” before Rome decides he’s a liability?

I invite anyone who has clear evidence of Pell’s duplicity to post it here as a comment.

As part of my website, I have a list of literary references to clergy sexual abuse. The reason I began the list was because I was tired of devout churchgoers telling me it was a modern phenomenon, and rare. My contention was that it was not only longstanding, but so much a part of the social psyche that casual references to it abound throughout the ages. So then I had to prove that (for the sceptics, natch!).

In modern times, the ultimate example is undoubtedly The Thorn Birds, although arguments run rife as to whether it really constitutes abuse (see the above link to my site for further discussion of that). But I found references from Oscar Wilde’s era (1800s), Chaucer (1300s) and right back to 120AD. So now I’m inviting anyone who comes across such a reference in their reading to add it here as a comment, to help me build my website list.