AUSTRALIA’S Catholic bishops and leaders of religious institutes have renewed their apology to people who have been victims of abuse while in the care of the Church.
The renewed apology was made on December 14 in a statement responding to a report of the Senate inquiry into the care of children in institutions.
The bishops and religious leaders have formed a group to analyse the recommendations of the report, released by the Senate Community Affairs Committee on August 30.
The inquiry focused on the experience of children who were placed in care between the 1920s and the 1970s, and makes 39 recommendations.
In the report, ‘Forgotten Australians: A report on Australians who experienced institutional or out-of-home care as children’, the committee estimated that at least 500,000 Australians experienced care in an orphanage, institu
tion or other form of out-of-home care during the last century.
‘The committee received hundreds of graphic and disturbing accounts about the treatment and care experienced by children in out-of-home care,’ the report said.
‘Their stories outlined a litany of emotional, physical and sexual abuse, and often criminal physical and sexual assault. Their stories also told of neglect, humiliation and deprivation of food, education and health care.
‘Such abuse and assault was widespread across institutions, across states and across the government, religious and other care providers.’
The bishops and leaders of religious institutes, in their statement, said they had been ‘moved by the courage of those who have laid bare their experiences before the committee’.
‘An apology was first made in the 1996 document ‘Towards Healing’, and we formally renew our apology to those whose abuse was perpetrated by Catholic Church personnel,’ they said.
‘The revelations contained in the report are the very opposite of all that we would wish to stand for.’
The bishops and religious leaders said they deeply regretted the hurt caused ‘whenever the Church’s response has denied or minimised the pain that victims have experienced’.
‘And we regret the hurt and distress caused to the many good people who have worked in this area.’
