Melbourne Victims’ Collective: Strategic follow up to Archbishop Comensoli

At the final Melbourne Victims’ Collective meeting of 2019, Clare Leaney presented the following information on IGFF and MVC follow-up to the earlier meeting with Melbourne Archbishop Peter Comensoli.

The presentation was split into a series of observations and recommendations for improvement in supporting survivors of abuse, working with justice and redress processes, increasing organisational transparency, and protecting the vulnerable from this abuse reoccurring.

Read Towards Justice – Charter here

2020 Welcome from CEO Clare Leaney

As we begin this next decade working with and on behalf of institutional abuse survivors, it’s important to take a moment and reflect on some of our successes and share some of our ideas for 2020 and into the future.

In late 2019 IGFF received a significant surge in funding provided by the Federal Government as a National Redress Scheme Support Service. Our team is to be congratulated for their enormous and often unrecognised hard work and dedication to assisting survivors on their recovery journeys.

This surge funding has meant that 2020 has opened with a huge leap forward in Foundation activity, with some amazing service delivery results up to 30th December 2019 that further support our calls for additional funding.

Read Towards 2020 Welcome – here

IGFF is Moving Office!

IGFF is Moving Office!

PLEASE NOTE: IGFF is moving office premises and you may experience a delayed response until Monday 17th September. We’re asking all of our client, supporters and associates to bare with us during this busy period.

Our email addresses will remain the same and a new phone number and postal address will be provided on our Website and Facebook page from Monday 10th September.

Read more – here

Company to hold Catholic groups to account

Catholic priests could face serious penalties if they don’t meet the mark set by a new professional standards body which will publicly name non-compliant dioceses and orders.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse on Monday heard Catholic Professional Standards Limited would audit the church’s authorities, with a view to holding them to account by publishing reports online

Read more – here

Church doesn’t put victims first: advocate

Victims are still not front and centre of the Catholic Church’s response to widespread child sexual abuse, a victims’ advocate says.

The leaders of the Catholic Church in Australia have to be held to account when they front the child sex abuse royal commission next week, In Good Faith Foundation chief executive Helen Last says.

Victims have had enough of apologies, she said.

Read more – here

Australia’s Catholic Church paid $213 million in abuse compensation, costs

Australia’s Catholic Church has paid A$276 million ($213 million) in compensation to thousands of child abuse victims since 1980, a government inquiry heard on Thursday — the first time the total compensation paid by the church’s schools, orphanages and residences has been revealed.

A report at a royal commission into institutional abuse said 3,066 victims had received some form of compensation from a Catholic body in the 35 years to 2015.

Cash payments of A$258.8 million amounted to an average A$91,000 per person. Some compensation was in non-cash payments.

read more – here

Australian Catholic Church paid $213 million to child sexual abuse victims

The country’s Catholic Church has paid more than quarter of a billion Australian dollars to child sexual abuse victims. An inquiry concluded that, while thousands of claims were made, many victims had not come forward.

Australien Prozess gegen Kindermissbrauch durch die katholische Kirche in Sydney (Reuters)
An average of 91,000 dollars each was paid to thousands of victims who came forward with claims to the church, an inquiry was told on Thursday.

read more – here

Act on abuse redress: archbishop to govts

Melbourne’s Catholic Archbishop Denis Hart wants governments to back a redress scheme providing a level playing field for child sex abuse victims.

Archbishop Hart, victims’ advocates and the states want specific details about how the federal government’s planned Commonwealth redress scheme for survivors of institutional child sexual abuse will work, including how complaints will be assessed.

He has called on governments to support a national scheme, amid doubts that all states, territories, churches and charities will take part in the opt-in scheme and provide their share of restitution.

read more – here