In Good Faith Foundation has emerged from eighteen years of significant service to thousands of survivors’, their families and community members in Victoria, Australia and internationally. The new charitable Foundation will sustain and support our services well into the future. We appreciate the following notable social justice contributors to the Launch event on August 20, […]
The Catholic Church had set aside tens of millions of dollars to compensate sexual abuse victims years before it was prepared to publicly acknowledge the extent of the problem and now has up to $150 million set aside to cover existing and future claims.
The Sunday Age can reveal the church’s insurance company has allocated up to $150 million to cover outstanding and anticipated compensation claims,more than three times the amount believed to have been paid to victims to date.
Many women at a Melbourne ashram at the centre of a sex scandal joined the group seeking healing after surviving rape and sexual assaults elsewhere, advocates say.
Fairfax Media reported on Monday that Mornington Peninsula’s sexual offences and child abuse investigation team were investigating the Shiva School of Meditation and Yoga at Mount Eliza after a number of victims reported alleged abuse there.
It can be revealed that many of the alleged victims were particularly vulnerable, having turned to the ashram and its spiritual teachings to help them with their own personal problems.
Forum: Criminal Abuse in Religious Institutions – Opportunities for Restorative Justice In Good Faith Foundation (IGFF) with the support of Victorian Association for Restorative Justice (VARJ), hosted a forum on current institutional responses with potential for restorative practice in the area of abuses by clergy, religious, spiritual and lay leaders. Experts and participants will consider: critical […]
Paul Hersbach kept his composure until the end. He, like all the 351 victims of child sexual abuse who have lodged claims to the Catholic Church’s Melbourne Response, had been forced to tell their stories to strangers before.
The first time he spoke about his abuse in detail, it was to two people at Carelink, the Melbourne Response’s counselling arm, to explain why he needed access to its services as a primary victim, not a secondary victim. He found this confronting and “exceptionally traumatic”
Follows the twin journeys of a fervently Orthodox Jewish father and his now-secular son, after the son breaks the code of silence in Melbourne’s Orthodox community and goes public with his story of being sexually abused as a student.
They were sexually abused by the clergy and then found themselves targeted by the Church’s lawyers. Why did it happen and who was responsible for the strategy?
This week on Four Corners, reporter Quentin McDermott reveals the systematic way the Catholic Church sought to conceal the sexual abuse of children, using lawyers to minimise the potential financial impact to the organisation.
The Catholic church will not go quietly. True, the archbishops of both Melbourne and Sydney have welcomed the Victorian report into clerical sex abuse. But they signalled at the same time that despite everything the church is still fighting to defend its patch.
Tears and ovations greeted the tabling of the report in the Legislative Council on Wednesday. “The words from the politicians just rang in my heart,” Chrissie Foster told Guardian Australia. “There they were saying what I’d wanted to say for so long and they have the power to change things. It was astounding.”
On November 13, 2013, the Victorian Parliamentary Inquiry into the Handling of Child Abuse by Religious and Other Organisations released its report. To mark this major milestone, IGFF took part in a Rally of Hope on the steps of the Victorian Parliament Our Rally Flyer outlined our aims and the Social, Pastoral, Educational, Structural […]
Former teacher Graeme Sleeman lost his career, health and financial security when he took a stand against a sexually abusive priest in Doveton.
GRAEME Sleeman knew Peter Searson was trouble even before Searson arrived as parish priest of Doveton in 1984. Searson liked to dress in military fatigues, often carried a revolver, and had a bad reputation when it came to money – and sexually abusing children.
