Church's insurance company 'dictated policy' on sex abuse

The Catholic Church's insurance company destroyed records relating to sexual abuse and drove the church's handling of victims of abuse, according to a former adviser to the church.

Psychologist Dr Robert Grant, who advised the Catholic Church committee dealing with sexual abuse, told ABC's Lateline on Thursday that Catholic Church Insurance dictated how victims should be treated under the Towards Healing protocol, a claim CCI denies.

US-based Dr Grant said meetings he attended in the late 1990s with the National Committee for Professional Standards, which was drafting the Towards Healing document, were attended by senior representatives of church-owned CCI or their lawyers.

Dr Grant, who has worked with the Catholic Church on sexual abuse in seven countries, said discussions devising the Towards Healing protocols centred on church liability and priests “being unjustly accused” rather than the wellbeing of victims.

Objections were raised to any document inclusions that may put the church at risk of admitting culpability.

“At first I thought maybe they were there to advise the church about the risk of taking certain pastoral stances but I began to realise quite quickly that they were actually dictating policy.”

Warning bells rang for Dr Grant when a senior CCI official boasted about destroying 40 boxes of personnel records.

“I was shocked, I was dumbfounded … I realised it was a statement to me how things were going to be run.”

The insurer, established in 1911 to insure church properties against fire, has paid out $30 million in compensation and counselling costs to about 600 child sexual abuse victims since 1990.

As a charitable institution CCI is exempt from income tax, returning any surplus funds to the Church.

Porters Lawyers principal Jason Parkinson, who has represented hundreds of clerical abuse victims, said the relationship between the church and CCI is a clear conflict of interest.

“They are profiting from the money that they've saved by not paying proper damages to victims of child sexual abuse.”

He told Lateline victims are told not to seek legal representation and incorrectly informed they will be unable to sue the church because their abuse occurred too long ago.

In an email to Lateline, CCI chief executive Peter Rush wrote he had no knowledge of Dr Grant or the alleged destruction of personnel records.

“I do not accept that any senior officer of CCI would have engaged in the inappropriate destruction of documents.”

Mr Rush, who also sits on the National Committee for Professional Standards, told the Victorian Parliamentary inquiry that CCI was distanced from the Towards Healing process.

But Lateline revealed a 2003 file note showing a CCI lawyer present during a meeting in which an abuse victim was offered $40,000 compensation.

The claims come as Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne executive director Francis Moore used the church's right of reply to submissions to attack the Victorian parliamentary committee inquiry into the handling of child abuse.

He accused inquiry chair Georgie Crozier of publishing “incorrect, unfair and misleading” figures on the number of victims dissatisfied with the Catholic Church's processes.

Francis Sullivan, chief executive of the Truth, Justice and Healing Council, said Towards Healing was all about putting victims' interests first.

"[Dr Grant] was part of the working up of the document and in the end it is the document we have to look at. I accept nothing's perfect and sometimes implementation is not what it could be."

He denied Towards Healing was about the church buying silence.

Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/national/ch...#ixzz2c9Yh9mHF


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