The news that George Pell is facing yet another legal action made me laugh, in the hollowest possible sense, because although it’s Pell and the Archdiocese of Melbourne named in the suit, it won’t be them defending it. Instead, step forward Catholic Church Insurance (and their lawyers), the company unfortunate enough not to have read the small print when they insured the Catholic Church in Australia for ‘professional standards liabilities’, over 100 years ago.
According to their own financial reporting, CCI spent more than $58 million in the last year alone, paying out victims of sexual abuse by predatory clerics. The company now has to raise fresh capital and liquidate investments to cover at least another $238 million in predicted future payouts, an unprecedented loss amongst insurance companies of this type. Oops.
Much of this has happened in the wake of the landmark Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, a four-year enquiry which has done immeasurable good in Australian society. The Commission’s rulings, and the law in general, make it clear that you can’t always get justice through criminal law, but you can often get it through the money, if you follow it and fight hard enough. And, for sure, you can’t put a price on the damage done to a person by the abuse they suffered as a child: such things exist beyond monetary value.
The War Against Child Abuse, is fought in the courts & in our hearts
But I tell you this for nothing: the damage these sorts of legal actions do to the institution responsible is considerable, and it hurts them badly. Groups such as the archdioceses of Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane, the Jesuits, the Marist Brothers, the Salesians of Don Bosco, the De La Salle Brothers and the Sisters of Mercy, have all paid a heavy financial price for what they’ve done, and had their activities severely restricted as a result. ‘Oh, but what about our charitable works which have suffered as a result of these claims?’, they cry. To which any reasonable person would tell them to get fucked. Any ‘charitable work’ that has depended on the abuse of even one child is not worth a penny in the eyes of God.
As such, the War Against Child Abuse, is fought on two fronts: in the courts, and in our hearts. We cannot resort to vigilantism, however tempting, lest we become the monster we hate. The courts are, by definition and necessity, ‘disinterested’: they rule according to either the burden of proof or the balance of probabilities, and that is as it should be. But the war we fight in our hearts is, to my mind, the more important one. It’s the war that asks us to fight, not only for our commonly held values of human decency and kindness, but for our survival as a species too, for there is no doubt that child abuse affects us, not just an emotional and physical level, but on an evolutionary one too.
The sexual abuse of even one child in our society is intolerable
Ranged against us in this fight, are people like Catholic Church Insurance, George Pell, the Archdiocese of Melbourne and the rat’s nest of Ballarat paedophiles and child abusers that it covered for. Don’t waste even a moment of your time crying for these people. And because sometimes it is all we have, I hope that this latest action against Pell and his friends wins, and wins big.
The Royal Commission said that, ‘the sexual abuse of even one child in our society is intolerable’, and so it is. In such matters, we can follow our hearts and we can follow the money. Either way we win, and not just because of the compensation money that the victim might receive, but because they give an abused person probably their only chance life to stand before the responsible authority and do something which no one else has done before, and that is to tell the truth about what happened to them as a child.
Nick Jordan
If you are an adult who has been affected by child sexual abuse then the people below can help. You are not alone.
In Australia call: Lifeline
In the US call: RAINN
In the UK call: Supportline
Regardless of what country you are in, any of the above services will direct you to the right place.
If you feel you are in danger now, call emergency services in your area.
For Australia contact The Voice of a Survivor.
Photo of St Peter's Square, Rome by Xavier Coiffic