Victoria police slam Catholic church over child abuse

Pia Akerman
The Australian
October 19, 2012

VICTORIA'S deputy police commissioner has accused the Catholic Church of impeding criminal investigation of child sex offences through its lack of cooperation with police.

In the first day of a parliamentary inquiry into how religious organisations have handled child sexual abuse allegations, Victoria Police deputy commission Graham Ashton resumed his scathing assessment of the church's internal processes which he said were hampering prosecutions.

"Victoria Police has concerns that existing protocols within religious organisations are focused on church issues such as legal liability and public relations rather than the long term interests of victims," he told the inquiry before a packed public gallery this morning.

Mr Ashton said the church had repeatedly dismissed allegations of abuse by already dead offenders, which was "an absolute nonsense" and stopped police from knowing the full picture.

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Mr Ashton said the existing processes within the Catholic church for dealing with abuse lacked transparency, independence and oversight.

He revealed police had for the first time compiled statistics on child sex abuse involving religious organisations, using data from 1956 to June this year.

In that period there were 2110 offences recorded by members of religious organisations against 519 individual victims, 370 of whom were in the Catholic church system.

Nearly 90 per cent of the victims were 11 or 12 year old boys at the time of the abuse.

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