Talk:Catholic Church sexual abuse cases in Australia

Main article links

{{main}} article links are intended to link to the main article about a topic. Thus, an appropriate main article link would be Catholic sexual abuse scandal in the archdiocese of Sydney. Roman Catholic archdiocese of Sydney is not an appropriate main article to link to from this article. Just use a plain wikilink from the article text to the article on the archdiocese. --Richard S (talk) 18:51, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

Epicentre of Catholic clerical sexual abuse in Australia

There was a query about the reference for this quote. I've referenced it and here is the quote. "The Maitland-Newcastle diocese has become notorious as perhaps the epicentre of Catholic clerical sexual abuse in Australia. Four serious paedophile priests have been jailed since 1997." 180.200.142.157 (talk) 12:55, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Deception website of Eros Association a reliable source?

User Bilby has deleted a number of parts of the article based on assertion that the web site Deception, a publication of the Eros Association is not a sufficiently reliable source for a matter of this nature. The Eros Association is essentially an industry group like a chamber of manufactures, a bankers association etc for the adult industry and has been active since 1992. The deception website [1] has a series of articles entitled Hypocrites: Church Clergy and Child Sex Abuse. They cover the period from 1990 to 2006. Based on this unsupported assertion that the Deception web site is unreliable a number of incidents have been excised from this article. While not citing individual references for each incident the articles on the Deception web site cite a number of books, reports and government publications. Given the "business risk" to the foundation of libeling people and publishing incorrect information leading to being discredited, and given the citing of sources, the deletion of material on the basis of an unsupported assertion of lack of reliability seems unjustified. I intend, in the absence of support for the assertion of unreliability, to reinstate much of the deleted materials when next visiting this article dinghy (talk) 06:19, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

My concern is that the Deception website is, as you say, part of the Eros Association, which works as a lobby group. The site's purpose appears to be to further the agenda of the Adult Sex industry by showing the damage caused by clergy. This means that they have a clear POV. I don't have a problem with seeing them as reliable for some issues, but their purpose and clear agenda makes them problematic for allegations of activities by people, especially where those allegations involve crimes as serious as child abuse. For those we should be able to turn to more reliable sources which don't carry the same baggage and which are more open to scrutiny - if, as you say, the site relies on reliable sources for its content, then I see no reason to assume that we can't also rely on that same reliable sources. I'm not opposed to including the content, but very strong claims, such as these, require strong sources in turn. - Bilby (talk) 06:50, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

Names and Nick Xenophon

Hi. I've removed the names of bothe rthe victim and alleged perpertrator. My understanding is taht we're generally wary about mentioning names of victims, even if those names appear in the media, but that in this case we have some additional concerns: the alleged victim specifically did not want the name of the accused to be released, and the accused is not currently facing any charges, nor being investigated oustide of the church, as the case has never been raised with the police. Thus all we have at this point are unsubstantiated and so far uninvestigated allegations raised by one person, and under those terms including names seems like a significant BLP problem. - Bilby (talk) 05:18, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

John Stockdale-Hall

I've removed John Stockdale-Hall again, although for personal reasons I don't like removing him, as it feels like hiding the case. However, as far as I'm aware, Hall was a layperson employed as a teacher at a Catholic school, rather than being a member of the clergy or otherwise connected to the Church. As such, I don't feel that he meets the presumed inclusion criteria, as it doesn't seem that the issue is one directly related to the Church. I guess is if there is strong evidence that the Church protected him there might be a case for inclusion, but while I'm aware that there were rumours, I think we'd need something pretty strong to establish this. Other opinions are, of course, welcome, and I'm happy to go with consensus here. - Bilby (talk)

On the same premise, Richard John McPhillamy, a lay assistant dormitory master at St Stanislaus' College during the mid-1980s, is listed. Should he be excluded? The article doesn't actually define what is included, and what is not. Is the article about sexual abuse that has occured at Catholic schools and parishes, or is it about sexual abuse perpetrated by members of the Catholic religious orders? Broken Rites takes the former approach. In my (small) mind I think this is the view of the general public. The fact that the perpetrators may, or may not, be members of a religious order are secondary to them occuring in Catholic institutions. Jherschel (talk) 12:15, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

I guess I'd see McPhillamy as an outlier as well. Sexual abuse has happened at a wide range of institutions. What has been a problem here, or so I thought, was a tendency for the Church to protect their own, moving clergy with allegations rather than necessarily addressing those allegations. People who they are not responsible for, such as lay people, from whom they had no reason to suspect abuse, and where they didn't act to cover it up, don't seem like part of the scandal. That said, I have no wish to protect Hall, (absolutely none, and I wish it wasn't Hall that made me consider inclusion requirements), but I figure there needs to be some inclusion criteria, and I'm not sure that being at a Catholic-run school is sufficient in and of itself, without some evidence that the Church was involved beyond providing the venue. It's tricky, though. I guess it comes down, for me, about what creates the scandal part - is it that abuse occurred, or something to do with the Church's response and environment? Both are viable, but result in different interpretations of scope. - Bilby (talk) 12:48, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

My suggestion is to make the intro clear that the article only relates to clergy. Jherschel (talk) 13:29, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

Catholic church admits 620 cases

this article says that the australian catholic church are admitting 620 cases since the 1930s. Probably more to expand from that in there too EdwardLane (talk) 07:15, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

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Gail Furness Told It Like it Was

She said "Children were ignored or worse, punished. Allegations were not investigated. Priests and religious were moved. The parishes or communities to which they were moved knew nothing of their past. Documents were not kept or they were destroyed."[2] 2601:447:4100:1692:1DB3:B12A:3C25:4585 (talk) 01:56, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

The issue here is what the report says versus what Furness told the commission, versus what's reported in a news article. I don't believe the current edits are a correct reflection of the source cited. Flat Out (talk) 02:07, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

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Catholic Church was not per capita the worst offender among the religious and secular institutions examined

- However, contrary to much media coverage, the Royal Commission also established that abuse from within the Church in Australia is largely an historical phenomenon, having peaked in the 1970s, and that the Catholic Church was not per capita the worst offender among the religious and secular institutions examined - Could you show me, where it is written in the report? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Erni120 (talk • contribs) 16:14, 13 September 2017 (UTC)

This sentence in the lead paragraph cannot be verified by the ANALYSIS OF CLAIMS OF CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE MADE WITH RESPECT TO CATHOLIC CHURCH INSTITUTIONS IN AUSTRALIA document. Therefore, the whole sentence shall be removed or a new and credible source shall be added verifying the sentence. I did not remove the whole sentence; fixed only a portion of it.--Taribuk (talk) 15:00, 15 December 2017 (UTC)

Here is a quote from the NYT Australia and Catholic Church ‘Failed’ Abused Children, Inquiry Finds the 14. December 2017 article:

Australian government investigators identified 4,444 victims of abuse and at least 1,880 suspected abusers from 1980 to 2015. Most of those suspected of abuse were Catholic priests and religious brothers. The report released Friday said 62 percent of the survivors who told the commission they were abused in religious institutions were abused in a Catholic facility.

I think we have to remove the "However ..." sentence completely as un-sourced and false.--Taribuk (talk) 22:02, 15 December 2017 (UTC)

Statistics to consider

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2019/02/catholics-sex-and-cardinal-pell/

"During the Royal Commission into institutional child abuse, the ABC breathlessly reported that 60% of child abuse in a religious institution took place within the Catholic Church. Shocking! How disgusting! What a hive of degenerates! Except that by not telling the whole story, the ABC was saying something completely untrue. What was left out was that during the time under investigation, 80% of children who attended a religious school or were resident in a religious institution, were students in or resident in a Catholic institution. The twenty percent of students/residents in institutions run by other religious groups accounted for 40% of the total abuse reported. In other words, a student in a non-Catholic religious school was more than twice as likely to have been molested than a student in a Catholic school."

Seems as though Catholic institutions indeed did not suffer from the highest proportion of abuse. 83.128.99.144 (talk) 15:27, 5 September 2019 (UTC)