Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Priests should report abuse confessions: O'Farrell

The New South Wales Premier Barry O'Farrell says priests need to be subject to mandatory reporting laws just like doctors and teachers and they must be made to disclose crimes revealed to them in the confessional.

Last Monday, the Prime Minister announced the creation of a Royal Commission into institutional responses to instances of child sexual abuse.

Mr O'Farrell says paedophile priests should no longer be allowed to use the confessional as a 'safe house', where they can receive absolution for their crime without consequence.

Sydney Cardinal George Pell has defended the absolute secrecy of confession as "inviolable".

But Mr O'Farrell told AM that has to change and the Royal Commission needs to address that.

"How can you possibly, by the continuation of this practice, potentially continue to give, if not a green light, a free pass to people who have engaged in the most heinous of acts," he said.

"Unless it's clear to those that might think about engaging in paedophile activity that there is no safe house where they can confess and get on with their lives, I suspect we'll come back in 10 years time and nothing may have changed."

Mr O'Farrell said he was expressing a personal opinion and the government has not looked at changing any legislation.

"But as I've seen recently, when these issues have been grappled with overseas, one of the responses, for instance from the Church in Ireland and a couple of the U.S states is for the church hierarchy to say 'well if you pass that law, we'll instruct our priests to ignore it'," he said.

Federal Attorney-General Nicola Roxon has begun consulting with her state counterparts about the scope and scale of the royal commission.

She says the idea that priests are not required to go to the police with information about child abuse is "abhorrent".

"Child sex abuse is a crime, it should be reported, and I know that the royal commission is going to have some very complex issues to deal with," Ms Roxon told ABC News 24. "But I think we can't afford to say that that should not be on the table, because clearly that is a concern."

The inquiry is likely to begin early next year, and Ms Roxon is warning it will take years, not months to finish the investigation.