When the Uniting Church in Australia (UCA) released a paper addressing issues of sexuality for discussion across the UCA in the mid 1990’s, one of the older ladies in one congregation said “I don’t know why we have this paper. We have never talked about these things, and I don’t want to talk about them now.”

A few years later I spent two hours with a lady in her 70’s – she was in hospital and was dying. The lady was very agitated and moving restlessly; the family couldn’t understand what she was worried about. After some time she told me she had been sexually abused by her stepfather when she was 11 and I was the first one she had told about it: that experience of sexual abuse had scarred her life impacting on all her relationships. The sad thing was that it was only as death came near that she talked, accepted that the sexual abuse was not her fault, and finally released the hurt and the tension in her body.

The common approach by sexual abusers is to blame their victims for the abuse, telling them that if they talk either no one will believe them, or ‘if’ they do, that others will believe the abuse is the victim’s fault or that they ‘asked for it’. It’s hardly surprising that as a result many of the victims remain silent about their sexual abuse, keeping it to themselves and secret for years, and often for up to many decades.

The belief by leaders of some organisations, especially highly regarded and publicised Christian Churches, that they are not subject to the law of the country they work in, is a medieval concept and was part of the way the law operated during that medieval period. The Lords of the manor, barons, dukes etc., ran their own courts and too often justice for misconduct (including sexual and otherwise) was arbitrary and depended on the goodwill or whim of the Lord. In this context the church operated and wielded its own law.

The problem seems to be that there are leaders in today’s churches and those in positions of authority who apparently believe the medieval system still prevails. In some situations the Catholic Church claims it cannot be sued in civil courts. The reality is however, that we in our society do not accept that the churches are totally separate from the rest of our society: if the churches and those holding position of power in these organisation expect to be protected by the law, then they must also remain subject to the same law.

To claim that a person who has been ‘ordained’ to ministry/priesthood is exempt from obedience to the law of the land, and for the church to deal with him/her separately, is completely at odds with the common law in relation to sexual abuse and is, I believe, a complete failure to take seriously the vows made at the time of ordination.

Catholic archbishop Dennis Hart, at the Royal Commission into Sex Abuse, publicly stated that the Catholic Church believes mandatory reporting of sexual abuse should exclude the confessional.

This suggests to me that the Catholic Church sees the confessional as over-riding the words attributed to Jesus in the Christian Bible: “If any of you puts a stumbling block before one of these little ones [children], it would be better for you if a great millstone were fastened around your neck and you were drowned in the depth of the sea.” [Matthew 18:6 NRSV]  

If the confessional is used as an excuse by the Catholic Church for not dealing with instances of sexual abuse, then it is clearly not appropriate for the confessional to be exempt from mandatory reporting; this should apply equally to any similar process being used in any other church or group.

The fact that the church claims exemption from the common law suggests a gross misuse of power and a gross disservice to many individuals, families and communities. The people whose lives have been affected by experiences of sexual abuse and sexual misconduct, and who have been rendered silent by their loyalty to the very institution that claims to care for and love its members, deserve to be heard and have their abusers dealt with in a proper manner according to the law.

It is time the Catholic Church, along with all other Christian Churches and organisations who claim to be active in addressing issues of sexual abuse, be held accountable for what they have allowed for decades to go unchecked. The confessional, and any equivalent in any other church or organisation, must be subject to mandatory reporting.

By Graeme Ness, Retired Minister of the Uniting Church in Australia, Woolgoolga, NSW, Australia

Related Reading:
Secrecy and Sexual Abuse in the Church