The Dominion Post
May 19 2004
A church and its dirty little secrets
Editorial
It will take the
Catholic Church a long time to get over Alan Woodcock, though perhaps not as
long as it will take his victims. His story, finally out in public after the
best efforts of the church to keep it hidden, is disturbing..
The church is keen to portray its cover-up -- and its actions can be described
as nothing less than that -- as a product of an era. It has apologised for what
it calls errors of judgment made in the past and the inadequacy of its response
to complaints by boys that they were being subject to indecencies by Woodcock.
Though there is no doubt the church's apology is sincere, it still falls well
short of a full explanation for why it took no action other than to repeatedly
shift Woodcock from place to place, thereby risking the exposure of more boys
to his predation. The offending for which Woodcock has pleaded guilty occurred
mostly in the 1980s. Most people who have left school remember the 1980s. They
were not so long ago. Few subjects were taboo and paedophiles were regularly
being convicted and sentenced. Woodcock had been convicted of a sexual offence
against a boy in 1979 and the church knew of the incident, yet still appointed him
to teach at boys' schools in Hastings and
The only conclusion most members of the public can draw is that the church was
far more concerned with the reputation of its schools than with the protection
of its boys. It must have quickly become evident to the church that Woodcock
was a paedophile and serial offender. The boys certainly knew.
The church's desire to keep its schools out of any scandal seems only
reinforced by advice from Judge Peter Trapski, as
late as 1994, on attracting as little media attention as possible. It is
reported that Judge Trapski advised placing
information about Woodcock's activities, which must, to a judge, have been
immediately obvious as criminal behaviour, into an envelope marked
"Secret".
Secrecy rarely serves society well. Matters are usually secret only when it is
in someone's interest for them to be so. In this case, it appears the church's
dirty little secret would have gone on being known to only a few, without the
tenacity and courage of Terry Carter, one of Woodcock's victims. Mr Carter knew
that he had been done wrong -- first by Woodcock, but also by those who had put
Woodcock's and the church's interests ahead of the victims. By launching his
civil case and going public, police had to act.
The Society of Mary has given assurances that, nowadays, in the case of anyone
under 18 in their care being sexually abused, police are immediately called.
That is reassuring, and should be the policy of all schools, clubs,
institutions or groups that from time to time have care of children. Their
first obligation is the safety of youngsters in their care. It is a police job
to investigate and find whether there is any case to answer, and a court's role
to hear the evidence. Whatever bad publicity may result from police
investigations or court cases in the short term will serve any institution
better than the kind of exposure that will come after a cover-up.
More importantly, it is everyone's responsibility to help keep children and
young people safe. To do nothing about criminality is tantamount to condoning
it.