Sex abuse in Catholic institutions: key questions for the royal commission

This . . . can only be interpreted for what it is: a massive failure on the part the Catholic Church in Australia to protect children from abusers and predators, a misguided determination by leaders at the time to put the interests of the Church ahead of the most vulnerable and, a corruption of the Gospel the Church seeks to profess. As Catholics we hang our heads in shame . Frances Sullivan, CEO, (Catholic) Truth, Justice and Healing Council.

A key official report for one Catholic diocese found that:

the diocese's preoccupations in dealing with cases of child sexual abuse, at least until the mid-1990s, were the maintenance of secrecy, the avoidance of scandal, the protection of the reputation of the Church, and the preservation of its assets. All other considerations, including the welfare of children and justice for victims, were subordinated to these priorities ......and (the diocese) did its best to avoid any application of the law of the State". The report concluded that there is "no doubt that clerical child sexual abuse was covered up.

So which Catholic diocese do you think the report related to? Ballarat? Newcastle? Sydney?

No. The extracts come from the Murphy Commission's report into child sex abuse within the Catholic Archdiocese of Dublin released in 2009. Investigations into clerical sexual abuse of Catholic children in the US came up with broadly similar conclusions, and you don't need to be Nostradamus to foresee that Australia's Royal Commission is going to come up with much the same findings. The similarity in the Catholic Church's behaviour across countries stands out, and suggests a systemic problem along with an organised cover-up world-wide.

At the request of the Royal Commission, the Australian Catholic Church has released survey data revealing that 7% of priests, working between 1950 and 2009, have been accused of child sex crimes. The figures were even higher for some orders of religious brothers: 40% for the Brothers of St John of God, 22% for the Christian Brothers, and 20% for the Marist Brothers.

Between 1980 and 2015, 4,444 alleged incidents of child sexual abuse relating to 93 Catholic Church authorities in Australia were reported. The average age of victims was 10.5 for girls and 11.6 for boys, and (notably) the overwhelming majority were male.

These statistics on abuse have been criticised as "dodgy" but are probably still broadly indicative. The statistics are based only on reported allegations, and they also do not include complaints made that did not have follow-up or investigation. The survey had also apparently sought responses from 75 church authorities but only showed results for 26. Any authority with fewer than 20 claims of abuse has been left out. A (partially?) offsetting factor is that not all allegations made turn out to be true, and a number of allegations were made that were clearly false. There was also no time limitation in relation to the date of the alleged incidents of abuse. The earliest incidence of alleged abuse reported was in the 1920s and the latest was after 2010.

While most of the eventual findings of the Royal Commission are predictable (even at this early stage), it is worth highlighting areas where clear answers specific to the Catholic Church should be demanded by the community.

The first area, where a clear answer is required, is why reported abuse rates were so high for the Catholic Church. A related issue is why some religious orders had much higher rates of abusing than others.

The disproportionate targeting of boys in part probably reflects proximity and opportunity. Catholic schools and boarding institutions are generally single sex, and historically had same sex staff. Boarding schools and institutions provided the greatest opportunities for abusers, which also explains why religious orders running such places had relatively more offenders.

An analysis of the causes of paedophilia within the Catholic priesthood and religious (that I found insightful and very credible) was provided to the Royal Commission by Dr Christopher Geraghty in his submission and evidence. Dr Geraghty describes being "hijacked into a seminary" around 1950 at the age of 12 (he attended a boarding school at Springwood, NSW for boys intending to become priests), and was later ordained at the age of 23. He claims that the system "cut his psycho-sexual development off at the knees".

According Dr Geraghty, the underlying causes lie in the culture of the Church, particularly its "mangled theology of human sexuality", and poor selection and training of priests and religious. In the past, he believes that recruitment to the priesthood and religious life occurred at too young an age, and training (and priestly life) was isolationist and did not adequately allow personal development.

There does seem to be a link between being recruited to religious life at a young age and the subsequent risk of offending against children. High rates of recorded abuse by Marist Brothers and by Christian Brothers are probably connected (at least in part) to their past practice of widely recruiting adolescents (mainly from the schools they ran) to attend their "juniorate" (a secondary boarding school where boys prepared to become Brothers). Adolescents were effectively placed on a pathway leading to a lifetime as a celibate teacher in the orders' primary, secondary, and special schools. This was a difficult pathway to leave because a stigma attached (especially in Catholic circles) in those days to those who subsequently "gave up their vocation".

Convicted notorious Marist paedophile Kostka Chute reportedly was recruited in the 1940s at age 11-12 to attend the Marist Brothers juniorate at Mittagong, NSW. I myself can recall growing up in Ireland and, while attending a Christian Brothers' school in Dublin in the mid 1960s (at the age of 13), my class was subject to recruiting efforts by their vocations director. Much of this has now changed. No Catholic religious orders now recruit at so young an age, and there is now much more mixing between seminarians/novices and the general community. According to the Marist Brothers, the average age of a man entering their communities today is 28, and the average age of a man taking final vows in religious orders is 37.

In my view those who were recruited into religious or priestly congregations in their adolescence or teens were themselves victims. They were too immature to know whether they were suited to a life of celibacy, and in subsequent training were generally sheltered from contact with the opposite sex. Many of these victims of the system ended up stunted in their emotional and sexual maturity, and had no legitimate sexual outlet available.

A second key question for the Royal Commission relates to whether the cover up by Australian bishops of sex abuse within the Church was by their own volition or dictated in part by either Canon law or direction from the Vatican. A related issue is why the narrative of abuse by Catholic religious is so similar across countries.

A number of witnesses at the Royal Commission alleged that the Vatican orchestrated the active cover-up of child sexual abuse cases through secret archives and church law. Secreta Continere (pontifical secrecy), and Crimen Sollicitationis (crime of solicitation) were said to be elements of canon law contributing to secrecy by priests and bishops in matters of sexual crime. A panel of experts, specialising in canon law, appeared before the Royal Commission, agreeing almost unanimously that the directives from Rome were often geared to protect the Church rather than its victims.

In November 2009, the Murphy Commission in Ireland found that "the structures and rules of the Catholic Church facilitated" the cover up of sexual abuse, and severely criticised the limited capacity of canon law to discipline offending priests. In March 2010, Pope Benedict wrote a Pastoral Letter to the people of Ireland, in response to the Murphy Report. He did not respond to the Commission's findings about the secrecy required by canon law or the inadequacy of the canonical disciplinary system. Instead he blamed the Irish bishops for the cover up, and for not applying "the long-established norms of canon law".

It will be interesting to see what our Royal Commission concludes.

A final key question (in my mind) for the Royal Commission relates to the links (if any) between the sexual abuse of adolescent boys and homosexuality among Catholic priests and brothers.

Taken at face value, the abuse of boys by Catholic religious (and other males for that matter) gives the appearance of being overtly homosexual, because of the nature of the acts perpetrated. It is often also claimed that evidence indicates that homosexual men molest boys at rates grossly disproportionate to the rates at which heterosexual men molest girls. Conservatives like Archbishop Silvano Tomasi (who was the Vatican's representative at the UN in Geneva) claim that the majority of Catholic clergy who abused boys were not paedophiles but homosexuals attracted to sex with adolescent males. Similar claims are regularly made by some Protestant churches (such as the Baptists).

The gay lobby on the other hand dismisses such concerns, insisting that there is no connection between homosexuality and the sexual abuse of children. There is the complicating issue that many child molesters arguably cannot be characterised as having an adult sexual orientation at all, and may simply be fixated on children. Alternatively, they may have never developed the capacity for mature sexual relationships with other adults, or may only have opportunistically focussed on boys in the absence of access to the opposite sex.

The actions of clerical abusers of boys might be analogous to that of prison populations, where homosexual behaviour is common even though the prisoners are not necessarily homosexuals. There are also cultures, where men are rigidly segregated from women until adulthood, and homosexual activity is accepted and then ceases after marriage.

There is said to be a kind of Catholic version of "Don't ask, don't tell" in relation to rates of homosexuality amongst Catholic clerics, and celibate occupations provide an unsuspicious closet. The Church distinguishes between "homosexual attractions", which are not considered sinful, and "homosexual acts", which are. Gay men who are closeted and chaste (abstain from sexual activity) are accepted within the priesthood, though men with "deeply rooted homosexual tendencies" or who are sexually active are not supposed to be ordained. Pope Benedict's Vatican (in particular) was notably hostile to gay priests.

The John Jay Report into sexual abuse by Catholic Priests in the US did not link sex abuse of minors with homosexuality. It instead found that "individuals who molest children may be heterosexual, homosexual, or bisexual with regard to victim selection". It did report that "available figures for homosexual priests in the United States range from 15 to 58 per cent". Wikipedia further notes that studies find it difficult to quantify specific percentages of Roman Catholic priests who identify as gay.

The Second John Jay Report released in 2011 had a similar tone to the first. It concluded that the vast majority of clerical sex offenders are not paedophiles at all but were "situational generalists" violating whoever they had access to. The researchers controversially concluded that there is no causative relationship between either celibacy or homosexuality, and the sexual victimisation of children in the Church. The first part of this finding (in many people's minds) undermined the credibility of the second.

It will be interesting to see what the Royal Commission has to say. An analysis of any links between homosexuality and abuse of boys might be more easily done in relation to non-Catholic institutions, where celibacy is not such a complicating issue.

Overall the public can mainly look to the Royal Commission to provide a historical analysis. The problem of child sex abuse within the Catholic Church (and indeed within other churches and institutions) peaked decades ago. It was mainly solved by changing attitudes, whereby child sex abuse became more easily spoken about and reported. Institutions (including churches) responded to being found out instead of acting on their own volition.