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Accusations of Abuse in Institutions

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The Southland Times
September 2, 2003

A sorry parade continues

Perhaps the most shocking aspect of Father Magnus Murray's sexual offending is that so few people will be shocked at all.

Those whose lives have in some way connected with that of the Gore-raised priest, now retired, will of course have stronger feelings. But for the wider community, the whole business is drearily, miserably, unsurprising.

Murray last week joined the trudge of sexual offenders from the ranks of the clergy to appear in court to account for their antiquated evils. He admitted in the Dunedin District Court to 10 serious offences against four boys, spanning from the late 1950s to the early 1970s. Though he never held a clerical post in Southland, he taught in Dunedin Catholic secondary schools and worked in parishes at St Clair and Mosgiel.

Even the fact that his offences occurred over such a sustained period scarcely raises fresh questions.

Horrible parallels throughout not only the Catholic Church, but other religious and charitable groups, have long since been made public.

Former Gore parish assistant Father John Harrison is among those who would like to know how such offending could have continued for so long without detection. It must be all the more chastening for the church to realise that, nowadays, anyone as puzzled as Father Harrison is in a minority.

Although he is entitled to point to the insidious way paedophiles often operate from a position of trust, the continuance of sexual offending has more to do with the church's horrifically damaging reluctance to confront its own failings squarely.

Some of this may have been due, as he says, to "knowledge of the time," such as medical understanding that treatment could be effective. However, the church deserves little sympathy for whatever extent it may be able to claim it was misled by contemporary wisdom. This cannot gloss over the fact that the laws of the land back then were entirely clear about the criminality of acts that went unreported upon detection.

Churches have to accept a large part of the responsibility for the persistence of sexual and violent abuse by repressing and internalising the problem. Internationally, the evidence shows that when the groundswell of complaints reached the stage that something had to be done, the practice uncovered time and again has been that the problematic priests were moved. All the more disgraceful was that sometimes it put them once again in positions of power over the most vulnerable children who lacked parents or families to turn to for support.

Gore parish priest Father Pat McGettigan says Murray has accepted responsibility for his crimes and that this case shows that "most of us are imperfect witnesses" to church teaching and struggle to live up to the ideal.

Murray's is not a story of a man or an institution falling short of an ideal, but falling short of the lowest standards of tolerable behaviour, and persisting in that state for a long, long time. As the social climate in recent times has increasingly empowered the abused to come forward with their stories, the church has of necessity done more to confront its darker corners, existing as well as historic. And we should have care with any suggestion that cases such as Murray's are "historic." They represent an unanswered, unredressed wrong, which can only have added to the harm inflicted on his victims.

Churches profess a zero-tolerance policy to sexual or violent abuse. Part of living up to this is putting an end to confidentiality clauses as part of out-of-court settlements, as is ensuring that they cannot be a haven for offenders.

Most, if not all, of the churches and organisations would argue that this is already the case. To that extent, the long-overdue court appearances can only be expected to continue. As we said, it is a sorry parade; but one that needs to be part of the way forward.