PACIFIC: NZ Catholic Church dismisses sex-abuse priest claims
Updated
The New Zealand Catholic church has dismissed claims that some priests who've sexually abused children are being shifted from Australia and New Zealand to the Pacific. A psychologist and former nun who earlier this year quit as complaints manager and head of the professional standards committee of the Order of St John of God in Australasia, says offending priests are often moved from country to country to avoid legal problems.
Presenter: Bruce Hill
Speakers: Lynsay Freer, New Zealand Catholic Bishops' Conference
FREER: She talks about the Church in Australia and New Zealand, we have about four or five people serving in Papua New Guinea and I've checked them all out and as far as I can tell, as far as any of us can tell there's no suggestion at all that there were ever any allegations of abuse against any one of those people. An example that's given I understand in that interview of hers was a 62-year old Catholic priest of a particular order who was tried in the Melbourne court, 13 charges of indecent assault against teenage boys in Victoria. Now there's nothing there to say that he's a New Zealander, as far as I know he's not, he's Australian. So I think it's very interesting that we're getting the New Zealand church is getting these accusations levelled against it as is the church in Australia, and I think that to actually make a claim like that it seems to me that without specifics a claim like that has to be taken really with a grain of salt.
HILL: You're referring here to the case of Father Klep who was a Salesian brother I think he was found in Samoa. Are there procedures in place to make sure that this sort of thing doesn't happen?
FREER: There are certainly, certainly in New Zealand and there are in Australia too. We have protocols and processes for dealing with complaints and allegations of sexual abuse and they're very robust procedures and they're followed very faithfully and there's no way that anybody who's had any kind of substantiated allegation made against them would ever be sent anywhere else. Well certainly they wouldn't be sent anywhere else in the ministry, but even if they wanted to, even if the complaint was less than substantiated and they were moved somewhere, certainly the receiving dieses or country would certainly be advised of that complaint against them, so they'd be full disclosure of what it was all about. So there's no question of people being sort of sent off holus bolus to the Pacific Islands to just get them out of the way of trouble in their home country, there's no way. Now this may well have happened in the past many, many years ago, I don't know that, we can't know that, and I'm not sure whether she's talking about historically or whether she's talking about present day. But I think if she's going to make claims like that that give a very poor public perception of the procedures that the church uses in these circumstances she needs to come up with some evidence.
HILL: When this issue of Catholic priests and sexual abuse comes up what's the general reaction in the church to this?
FREER: We had a few of them of course as you'd know and at first it was a huge sense of shock and outrage and betrayal, and I suppose it still is, there is a sense that we're very betrayed by such people. But the fact is though that those priests and brothers and so on against whom these accusations have been proven represent a very tiny minority. We understand less than one per cent of these men and the large majority, the vast majority of whom are men of great commitment and dedication and generosity, and I think it's really appalling that they're in some way tainted by the very few bad apples in the box. I think one thing that I think is important is that all of us I think in Australia as in New Zealand, while we don't have mandatory reporting of sexual abuse claims that are made to us because there are some people who wish not to go down that path, they want things to be dealt with in house. We do always suggest to all complainants first of all when they come with a complaint that they should if it's a criminal offence go to the police because the police have far greater investigative powers than we do, and that we'll give them every assistance in going to the police to make a complaint.
