The clergy sex abuse study, titled "Sexual Boundary Violations Among Catholic Religious", was conducted under the approval of the human research ethics committee of Australian Catholic University.

Encompass Australasia's former chief clinician, Dr Geraldine Taylor, said the project involving the files of clergy treated by her organisation was "incomplete" and only in the data-gathering stage when Encompass closed.

She said the research had been "archival in nature" and examined de-identified files collected by Encompass Australasia between the time it was established in 1997 and 2004 in order to "to contribute to an understanding of child sex abuse".

Dr Taylor said the aim of the project had been to explore "factors like attachment styles, personality attributes etc. of offenders".

"Researchers did not have access to client identities, demographics or content, therefore reporting issues [to police] were not relevant," she said.

An ACU spokeswoman said national rules governing human research required approval by a human research ethics committee.

"In this case Encompass, which had no HREC of its own, sought ethical approval from the HREC of ACU," she said.

Encompass Australasia, located at Kincumber on the NSW Central Coast, was established by the Australian Catholic Bishops' Conference and the Australian Conference of Leaders of Religious Institutes.

It accepted about 1100 clergy and lay people for "assessment" between 1997 and 2008 to determine their suitability to work with children and vulnerable adults. But several hundred clergy were treated for serious psychosexual problems during that period, including paedophilia.

Fairfax Media said Encompass Australasia's clinicians also treated patients suffering from depression, alcoholism, drug abuse and other mood disorders, and its clinical programme was well regarded.

Sources:

Sydney Morning Herald

Image: SBS

According to whistleblowers closely involved with the now-defunct Encompass Australasia clinic — which some New Zealand priests attended — some paedophile clergy were diagnosed with a "mood disorder" so they could be treated at the Wesley Private Hospital in Sydney and meet private health insurance criteria.

Fairfax Media said a "well-placed source" aware of the status of some clergy treated by the Church clinic between 1997 and 2008 said he believed several did not have a mood disorder but were "cold and calculating criminals" who bragged about their exploits with children to others while at the hospital.

Fairfax Media reported that several sources said the clinicians at Encompass Australasia ran a world-class treatment centre, but it was used by some Church leaders as a "smokescreen" to hide paedophile clergy.

New South Wales upper house MP Gordon Moyes, who as superintendent of the Wesley Mission in the late 1990s was closely involved with the Encompass Australasia programme being set up at the Wesley Private Hospital, said that neither he nor hospital administrators knew the identity of clergy sent for treatment or the nature of their offences.

"In general we knew that they were largely priests of the Catholic Church who had engaged in various forms of serious sexual sins, particularly against children," Moyes said. "But Encompass was extremely secretive about all their business relationships."

Encompass Australasia, which was set up by the Australian Catholic Bishops' Conference, treated about 1100 clergy for sexual abuse problems, depression and substance addictions before it was deregistered in 2010.

In a submission to the Victorian parliamentary inquiry on sex abuse, the Catholic Church in Victoria has proposed mandatory reporting by ministers of religion and a new protocol for reporting offenders to police that would protect the privacy of victims who want anonymity.

The Archbishop of Melbourne, Archbishop Denis Hart, said there should be an exemption for information received during the sacrament of confession.

Sources:

The Age

Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne

Image: World News