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Accusations of Abuse in Institutions

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The Dominion Post
October 19, 2002

Catholics to review sex abuse claims

All sex-abuse claims against the Catholic Church in New Zealand will be reviewed to see how future allegations can be better handled.

The Church is also looking at ways of standardising its responses to abuse claims instead of leaving it to individual orders of priests or nuns.

In a statement yesterday, the Church's bishops said they had an obligation to learn from their experience of the issue and be open to improvements.

The sex abuse scandal was discussed at a meeting of the bishops held over the past few days.

"We are endeavouring to discover the extent of offending that has taken place over the years within the whole Church community, and effectiveness or otherwise of responses to complaints," the bishops said.

"We are committed to justice and compassion for all involved in these situations and we repeat the assurances earlier given that we will confront the problem with openness and transparency."

Church communications director Lyndsay Freer said the bishops had decided they needed an overview of allegations. "We've got to coordinate information from various sources and establish some kind of central database," Ms Freer said.

The national sex abuse hotline set up in July was receiving two or three calls a week. Complainants were directed to the order concerned.

Society of Mary head Father Denis O'Hagan said his order's hotline had received calls from 165 individuals, with 33 making allegations against past and present members.

Ten calls related to former Upper Hutt priest Alan Woodcock who has been accused of sexually abusing teenage boys at Silverstream, Wellington and Palmerston North between 1982 and 1985.

Thirteen calls were about priests who had died, while three made claims about former priests. Seven made accusations about present members of the order.

Most complainants had been interviewed and offered apologies. However, no compensation payments had been made, pending a national approach to the issue, Father O'Hagan said. "I believe we have listened to all the complaints that have been made. These things take a long time to work out, and in each case there are different needs and different requests. It cannot be done quickly."