Catholic Church starts survey ‘to be prepared’ for abuse inquiry

Auckland: The Catholic Church is beginning its first-ever survey in New Zealand to get to grips with just how many priests abused how many children.

This could be New Zealand’s “Spotlight” moment, said a renowned researcher into Catholic abuse, Professor Des Cahill.

The Boston scandal, dramatised in the Oscarwinning film Spotlight, sparked the US church’s first prevalence study of abuse in 2002. “New Zealand bishops have known about this since the late 1980s,” said Prof Cahill.

“And so in 30 years, this is the first time that they’ve moved towards doing a prevalence study. This should have been done at least in the early 2000s.”

The Australian Church initiated a prevalence study in 2013 as part of their Royal Commission of Inquiry into abuse.

Church leaders had told him the survey was underway but had been dragged into it by the prospect of the Royal Commission in this country ordering them to provide information, Prof Cahill said.

The church later confirmed it had begun collating “information from bishops and congregations regarding complaints that they received related to abuse during this period”.

The commission’s Catholic liaison group Te Ropu Tautoko chair Catherine Fyfe said the church “wanted to be prepared to respond quickly to requests when and if the Royal Commission requested information from us”.

“The information that we have requested is far broader than the sexual abuse of children but will include any such complaints.”

Until the survey took place, the church was making policy, and trying to change its ways, in a vacuum of information, Prof Cahill said.

“It’s important to get the prevalence data because it’s on the basis of that you can make good policy.” He gave evidence to the Royal Commission of Inquiry in Auckland last week, drawing on the 384page report into Catholic abuse and cover-up that he co-authored as part of the Australian inquiry into abuse.

RNZ has spoken with Catholic dioceses that expect to strike problems in the survey, where religious orders are resistant to scrutiny or are based overseas, like the Christian Brothers in Australia, which was found to have been rife with abusers.

Ms Fyfe said a parallel survey of Catholic institutions that existed in the 1950-1999 period should be completed by the end of the year.

The Catholic Church’s lawyer Sally McKechnie promised the bishops’ full cooperation to the Royal Commission last Friday, 8 November.

“They are committed to their errors and omissions being examined transparently and openly,” she told the commissioners.

“We anticipate that investigations into faithbased churches will begin shortly. The Catholic bishops and congregational leaders welcome that opportunity. They’re committed to accepting responsibility.”