Child Abuse Royal Commission Calls For Priest Celibacy To Be Optional

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has finally concluded, handing down a mammoth 189 new recommendations to prevent child sexual abuse in Australian institutions and provide justice to the tens of thousands of people suffering the effects of historic abuse. Among the recommendations are the abolishment of the religious sanctity of confession, and priest celibacy being voluntary, which is sure to ignite wider debate.

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Much of what appears in the vast amount of literature handed down as the final judgement has been reported in some form or another over the past few years. But this is the most comprehensive judgement, and a damning indictment of Australia’s political, educational, religious and legal authorities in addressing the scourge of child sexual abuse.

The recommendations call for religious ministers to be required to report sexual abuse which is revealed to them in confession, which will no doubt cause debate as many religious institutions – like the Catholic Church – consider confession to be a sacred space which secular authorities cannot intrude into.

In general, the commission calls for a enormous national effort to smash apart the structures and systems which allowed these abuses to happen. Focus is placed in sentencing standards, and ensuring that those charged with historical offences are charged in line with current standards and expectations.

The report indicates the staggering breadth of the claims the Royal Commission investigated. About 4,000 institutions were reported to the omission, which heard from 1,200 witnesses over 400 days of testimony.

We will never know the true number. Whatever the number, it is a national tragedy, perpetrated over generations within many of our most trusted institutions.

Justice Peter McClellan was damning when he handed down the final recommendations, describing the enormous institutional failure which affected so many children.

The failure to protect children has not been limited to institutions providing services to children. Some of our most important state instrumentalities have failed. Police often refused to believe children. They refused to investigate their complaints of abuse. Many children who had attempted to escape abuse were returned to unsafe institutions by police.

The greatest number of abusers came from institutions aligned with the Catholic Church. Nobody from the Church was present when McClellan handed down the recommendations.

“I think it would have been a real sign of solidarity with the victims if we’d had some members of the hierarchy and senior figures from the church here,” Francis Sullivan, head of the Catholic Church’s Truth Justice and Healing Council, told The Guardian“One can only assume they didn’t feel comfortable coming here.”

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