Sex abuser priests escape punishment

FOUR Catholic priests or brothers have never faced justice for sexually abusing children, despite the church accepting their guilt.

The Roman Catholic Church in New Zealand has, for the first time, revealed the number of sexual abuse claims it has received, many of which are still being investigated.

They show the number of people coming forward is growing every year, decades after they were abused. But few, if any, are resulting in fresh complaints to police.

Victims have told The Dominion Post that, even now, the church remains unwilling to dig into the darker parts of its past.

‘‘If a victim came to me now, I’d say, ‘Stay away from the church’,’’ one victim said.

Bill Kilgallon, the church official handling sexual abuse complaints, has confirmed that details of known abusers were not passed to police unless victims lodged a complaint. Nor had the church made any attempt to investigate whether the priests had abused other children who had yet to come forward.

‘‘It’s for them to go to police, not for us. If they give us information and don’t want it to go to the police, we can’t ignore that,’’ he said. ‘‘It does grate for me that people don’t face a criminal consequence for their actions, but we have what we have.’’

In four years to December 2014, the church received 58 fresh childsex abuse complaints – and accepted 26 as ‘‘proven’’. A further 24 are still under investigation.

The number has risen every year – 25 complaints lodged in 2014 – and Kilgallon expects the stream to continue.

The proven complaints implicated 21 priests, monks, nuns and teachers. Most are dead but of eight who are alive, four have never been charged. Police did not provide figures for how many child abuse complaints involving the church it had received.

Kilgallon said all four had retired from the church and were not a risk. Their victims had chosen not to go to police because they could not endure a court case and no longer trusted police after a previous bad experience.

‘‘Some are very fragile in their mental health and couldn’t cope.’’

One acknowledged victim said he wanted nothing to do with the church or police after it took nearly a quarter of a century to jail the priest who sexually abused him in the 1970s.

He complained to both the church and police straight away, but the priest, Alan John Woodcock, was not jailed until 2004, by which time he had abused at least 11 boys.

After the man complained again in 2002, the church gave him a few thousand dollars on the condition he did not go public.

‘‘They make a little payment to people to try and shut them up, but it doesn’t improve your life.’’

The church does not record payments to victims but Kilgallon, who took up his role in 2013, said victims had previously been paid by the church on the condition of silence.

‘‘It’s never justified. It’s not the practice now.’’

The figures record only those complaints made after 2010, the year the church started keeping a central record.

They do not account for the unknown number of complaints never acted on, the dozen priests and church personnel convicted in the past 25 years, or the many likely victims who never came forward.

Sexual abuse victims said it was time for an independent inquiry, preferably a royal commission of inquiry, into all institutional sexual abuse.

In Ireland, a commission into child abuse reported in 2009 an ‘‘epidemic’’ level of abuse in boys’ schools, finding thousands of victims and more than 800 known abusers within the church over the past 35 years. It also implicated many senior priests in covering up the offending.

In the United States, the Catholic Church has spent an estimated US$3 billion (NZ$4.5b) settling lawsuits from child abuse victims. A 2004 church-backed report found nearly 2000 priests had abused at least 4500 children.

In Australia, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse was established in 2013, after a string of sex abuse cases and police allegations of a church cover-up. So far the commission has referred 666 complaints to police.

They make a little payment to people to try and shut them up, but it doesn’t improve your life.

Victim abused by a priest