JESUITS Australian provincial, Fr Mark Raper, has vowed to put people ahead of assets in dealing with complaints about sexual abuse.
Fr Raper made the commitment in an interview on ABC TV’s 7.30 Report on July 1.
He was responding to criticism of the way the Jesuits had handled a complaint from a former student of the Jesuits’ St Aloysius College in Sydney.
It was the second time The 7.30 Report had presented a story on the case involving Lucien Leech-Larkin who had complained against the Jesuits about abuse alleged to have occurred when he was a 15 year-old student in 1968.
After initially agreeing to be interviewed for the first program, Fr Raper was persuaded by legal advisers not to proceed but he later regretted that decision.
The 7.30 Report returned to the story when Fr Raper agreed to be interviewed a second time. He first contacted Mr Leech-Larkin to apologise.
During the interview, Fr Raper publicly apologised for the way the Jesuits had handled his complaint.
He admitted there were problems with the protocol the Jesuits had been using in the handling of such complaints.
Fr Raper said he had followed the protocol ‘ a different protocol to the Towards Healing process backed by the Church in Australia ‘ for the six months that he had been provincial leader.
He said he had endorsed the protocol for six months while it was being reviewed but was no longer content to do so.
In response to the suggestion his approach could mean ‘the Jesuits might be taken to the cleaners in a financial sense’, Fr Raper said that was the risk and one of the arguments that had been put to him. He was asked about the possibility of assets being at risk.
‘Well the assets are not as important as the people that we seek to serve,’ Fr Raper said. ‘What’s the point of doing what we’re doing if that’s not the case?”
Brigidine Sister Angela Ryan, who is secretary of the Joint Committee for Professional Standards of the Australian Catholic Bishops’ Conference (ACBC) and the Australian Conference of Religious Leaders, which is responsible for the Towards Healing process, said the Jesuits had been reviewing their protocol before this case had been publicised.
She said she had had meetings with the Jesuits about the review.
