Former prime minister Julia Gillard has called on Australia’s attorneys-general to urgently consider how to deliver justice to survivors of child abuse after the High Court ruled that a Catholic diocese was not liable for the historical sexual abuse of a young boy in Victoria.
Gillard, who in 2012 established the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, said she was “deeply concerned” about the High Court ruling.
The royal commission – widely considered among the most important decisions of Gillard’s period as prime minister from 2010 to 2013 – lifted the lid on decades of child sexual abuse that had occurred in Australian institutions.
But the High Court sent shockwaves through advocates for survivors last week when it overturned on appeal a previous ruling by Victoria’s Supreme Court and its Court of Appeal that had found the Catholic Church’s Ballarat diocese was legally responsible for the misconduct of its former priest Father Bryan Coffey.
The diocese and its current bishop, Paul Bird, were sued in the Supreme Court of Victoria by a man who said he was sexually assaulted by Coffey at his parents’ home in Port Fairy in 1971. The man, known in court documents as DP, was five years old at the time of the abuse.
Coffey, who is now deceased, received a three-year suspended sentence in 1999 after being convicted of charges including false imprisonment and the indecent assaults of males and females under 16.
Last week legal experts warned that the landmark decision could cast doubt over thousands of legal cases against religious orders nationwide. Other common law jurisdictions, including Britain, Canada and Ireland, have developed the principle of vicarious liability to apply to religious orders.
Yes isn’t she just wonderful……