Anti-Catholicism in the Coverage of Child Sexual Abuse

On Sunday November 17, 2012, I appeared on the ABC TV Insiders program. Barrie Cassidy was in the presenter’s chair and my fellow panellists were Lenore Taylor (now editor of the Guardian Australia) and David Marr (now also with the Guardian Australia). The decision to establish what became the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse had just been announced by Prime Minister Julia Gillard. When discussion turned to this topic, I made the following comment:

I’m not against it [the Royal Commission]. But it’s going to be hugely expensive. No one knows where it will start and when it will stop. And what I’m concerned about is that it’s not a distraction. If you look at the reports in the Australian this year, and on Lateline this year on the ABC, sexual abuse of children is rife among indigenous communities in the APY Lands in South Australia, in parts of the Northern Territory, in parts of Western Australia and Queensland. As we understand it,…