Abstract
The findings and recommendations emanating from the Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse (2012–2017) have advised religious organisations that they need to undertake significant changes to legal, governance and cultural/theological practices. The reason for urgency in enacting these changes is that religious organisations were the least child safe institutions across all Australian organisations, with poor practices of transparency, accountability and responsibility coupled with a tendency to protect the reputation of the institution above the safety of children in their care. In Australia, new state laws have been enacted and are impacting on the internal governance systems of religious organisations, including removing the secrecy of the Catholic confessional, instituting mandatory reporting of child abuse by clerics and criminalising the failure to report child sexual abuse. Religious organisations have moved to adopt many of the recommendations regarding their troubled governance including the professionalisation of religious ministry; adoption of professional standards; and appropriate redress for survivors and changes to religious laws. However, these changes signal significant challenges to current church–state relations, which have been characterised by positioning religious organisations as special institutions that enjoy exemptions from certain human rights legislation, on the basis of protecting religious freedom. This article examines and evaluates the nexus between state and religion in Australian public life as it is emerging in a post-Royal Commission environment, and in particular contested claims around the meaning and value of religious freedom versus the necessity of institutional reform to ensure that religious organisations can demonstrate safety for children and other vulnerable groups.
Highlights
The sexual abuse of a child is intolerable in a civilised society
The Commission stated that: The recommendations focus on factors that we identified as contributing to the occurrence of child sexual abuse in religious institutions and to inadequate institutional responses
It is clear that the Royal Commission’s recommendations, if implemented as written, would change the ways in which religious organisations operate as faith traditions
Summary
The sexual abuse of a child is intolerable in a civilised society. It is the responsibility of our entire community to acknowledge that children are vulnerable to abuse. During the tenure of the Royal Commission (2012–2017), these organisations were required to account for their poor organisational response to disclosures of child sexual abuse, management of perpetrators and poor care of victims The Royal Commission Final Report (Australian Government 2017i) notes that there were more complaints and allegations of child sexual abuse in religious institutions than in any other type of organisation Commission—a lack of organisational transparency, poor accountability and the concentration of power in the hands of (largely) clerical men—was facilitated by the secular state and its particular relationship with religious organisations (McPhillips 2015; Thornton and Luker 2009)
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