The state of Victoria's Voluntary Assisted Dying Review Board reported 124 deaths by assisted suicide and euthanasia since 19 June 19, 2019 when the procedure became legal.

There were 231 permits issued for the procedure that year.

The Board's report says 104 of those who died under the Voluntary Assisted Dying Act 2017 committed assisted suicide. A further 20 people were euthanized by a medical practitioner.

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrew had predicted there would be ‘a dozen' deaths in the first 12 months."

Victoria Health Minister Jenny Mikakos, of the Australian Labor Party, also expected the number of people seeking assisted suicide or euthanasia to be low initially, and increase in later years. Like Andrew, she thought as few as 12 people would access the scheme.

"We anticipate that once the scheme has been in place for some time, we'll see between 100 and 150 patients access this scheme every year," Mikakos said shortly before the law took effect.

Applicants under the Voluntary Assisted Dying Act 2017 ranged in age from 32 to 100, with an average of 71 years of age.

Forty-four percent were female, 55 percent were male and 1 percent were "self-described."

Most applicants - 78 percent - had diagnoses of malignant cancer and 15 percent had neurodegenerative diseases.

Anti-euthanasia advocate and director of HOPE, Branka van der Linden, called the number of deaths and the rate at which they were occuring "alarming.

"Half of those who applied for lethal drugs made their final request for euthanasia less than three weeks after they first requested it," van der Linden said.

"That's not a lot of time for reflection, for alternative options to be offered and explored, or for the necessary support to be provided."

Archbishop Peter Comensoli of Melbourne said the number of suicides was "heartbreaking."

The attitude toward death contradicts the extreme cautionary measures being put in place for the coronavirus pandemic, he noted.

"The whole state is making sacrifices to protect people from COVID-19 while on the other hand public hospitals are encouraging assisted suicide," Comensoli told The Catholic Weekly. "The contradiction is baffling for many doctors."

Tasmania is currently debating a bill that would legalize assisted suicide for Tasmanian residents 18 years of age and older, who "have decision-making capacity, (are) acting voluntarily, and have a relevant medical condition."

Tasmania rejected a similar bill in 2013.

Source

• Catholic News Agency
• Image: ABC News

Judge Mark Weinberg says he would have based his decision on a "significant body of cogent evidence" that cast serious doubt on the victim's accoun­t.

In his dissenting ruling, Weinberg says the case is unusual: it depends entirely upon the victim being accepted beyond reasonable doubt as a credible and reliable witness.

"Yet the jury were invited to accept­ his evidence without there being any independent support for it," he continues.

"From ... the complainant's evidence, it can be seen that there was ample material upon which his account could be legitimately subject to criticism.

"There were inconsistencies, and discrepancies, and a number of his answers simply made no sense.

"On occasion, he seemed almost to ‘clutch at straws' in an attempt to minimise, or overcome, the obvious inconsistencies between what he had said on ear­lier occasions, and what the object­ive evidence clearly showed.

"The complainant's alleg­ations against the applicant were, to one degree or another, implausible.

He could not exclude the possibility that some parts of the former choirboy's testimony were "concocted".

Weinberg says the prose­cution's case was challenged by accepted testimony of a signif­icant number of witnesses, "all of whom were of good character and reputable" he says.

The possibility of the abuse occurring in the sacristy­ relied on several factors.

These included whether Pell was always accompanied by parish priest Monsignor Charles Portelli and whether the area was a "hive of activity" shortly after Sunday Mass.

"Even the ‘reasonable possibility that what the witnesses who testified to these matters may have been true must inevitably have led to an acquittal ... because the complainan­t's account could not be reconciled at all with any such finding," Weinberg says.

Legal experts are beginning to focus on the verdict.

One, Mirko Bagaric, a professor at Swinburne University, expressed surprise the two judges who formed the majority had not followed Weinberg.

Bagaric's view is that Weinberg was "clearly the brightest bloke on the Victorian Court of Appeal" reports The Australian.

Bagaric told The Australian that Weinberg was a "powerhouse" on criminal matters and more experienced in this area than the two judges who formed the majority.

Weinberg's two colleagues on the appeal bench - Chief Justice Anne Ferguson and Justice Chris Maxwell - found the victim was telling the truth and ruled Pell's appeal should be dismissed.

Source

• The Age
• The Sydney Morning Herald
• The Australian
• The Australian
• Image: News.com

The accusation comes in the Victorian state government's report on child sex abuse.

Launching the report in the Victoria State Parliament, inquiry chairwoman, Georgie Crozier spoke of "a betrayal beyond comprehension" and of children suffering "unimaginable harm".

The Age reports that committee member Andrea Coote said the Catholic Church had

• minimised the problem,
• trivialised the problem,
• kept the community in ignorance, and
• ensured that perpetrators were not held accountable, so that children continued to be abused.

"With the notable exception of Father Kevin Dillon [the Geelong priest who gave evidence], we found that today's church leaders view the current question of abuse of children as a 'short-term embarrassment' which should be handled as quickly as possible to cause the least damage to the church's standing. They do not see the problems as raising questions about the church's own culture," she said.

Ms Coote accused the Australian Catholic hierarchy of a failure to 'walk the talk'; their values being in contrast to the stated values of the Church.

She said the Church had developed a "sliding morality", compartmentalising issues to avoid the obvious moral conflicts.

The Committee is calling for change.

Victorian Premier, Dr Denis Napthine called on the religious involved to hold their heads in shame.

He said the State Government will take up the committee's recommendations and will immediately begin drafting legislation to

• make a new criminal offence for 'grooming' a child
• make a new child endangerment offence
• remove the statute of limitations on offences
• make it a crime to conceal child abuse offences

While supporting the Committee's key recommendations, Archbishop of Melbourne, Denis Hart disagreed with the comment the Church hierarchy viewed child-abuse as a short-term embarrassment.

He said he thought the has made good progress in handling matters of sexual abuse, but could do better.

Committee members were greeted warmly when they left the chamber.

Sources

• The Age
• Image: The Australian

The baton needs to be passed on to another generation, one untainted by what has gone on, Professor Patrick Parkinson said.

Speaking at the annual Smith lecture in Sydney on Thursday night, the University of Sydney lawyer, a non-Catholic, declared there were still some rotten apples among the church's hierarchy.

"There are those still apparently who fail to understand their civic duty as citizens of this country to cooperate with the police," he said.

"There are those I have met whose greatest concern would appear to be to protect their organisation from scandal rather than children in their care.

"There are those who would aspire now to tough out the parliamentary inquiry in Victoria, to tough out the Hunter Valley-Newcastle inquiry, to tough out the royal commission."

Professor Parkinson said that while no denomination was free from reproach, the Catholic Church had abused far more children than any other.

"The church needs to find a way to remove its rotten apples from leadership and influence," he said.

"Until that happens I don't believe the church can recover the trust and respect of the Australian community."

Addressing the increased number of sexual abuse complaints, Spokesman for the Archdiocese of Melbourne, Father Shane Mackinlay says public forums such as the Victorian parliamentary inquiry into child abuse have encouraged victims to come forward.

"I think one of the things about that is that it is really good to see that victims have got the courage to come forward and that is clearly one of the benefits that the inquiry and the Royal Commission has brought," he said.

Victoria Police Chief Commissioner Ken Lay says police will investigate the new abuse cases and the church needs to pass on all evidence.

Sources

• ABC
• 7 News
• The Age
• Image: The Conversation

In a new submission the Church said it has now identified 849 victims and 269 offenders. The previous submission cited 618 victims.

The offenders included 98 priests, 114 brothers, nine nuns and 42 lay people (40 male and two female). Two were seminarians and four were unknown.

Church spokesman Father Shane Mackinlay said the revised figures were the result of collating submissions to the inquiry by five Church entities: the Melbourne and Ballarat dioceses, and the Christian Brothers, Salesians and St John of God orders.

The oldest abuse cases dated from the 1930s, and the figures were complete to June 30, 2012, Father Mackinlay said.

He still could not guarantee that the figures were comprehensive — for example, they did not include settlements outside the Towards Healing protocol by other religious orders — "but we're getting very close".

He said the original figure of 618 cases was based only on records from the Melbourne Response and Towards Healing protocols, the only ones that held centralised records, but more detailed research was done as the Church groups prepared to give evidence.

The new figures were submitted on June 6, one day before the deadline for written submissions.

Asked if the Church could have prepared the numbers in time for the public hearings — at which the number of 618 victims was frequently quoted — Father Mackinlay said the Church had done it as early as possible.

"This is the earliest opportunity we've had in working with the detail of the figures and reconciling them," he said.

Father Mackinlay said the Church's priority was to help and not to count victims.

Sources:

The Age

The Age

Image: JW News

"No. Never," the Sydney cardinal told the inquiry. He said the offending had largely escaped the view of Church officials who didn't know what a "mess" they were presiding over.

Cardinal Pell was Archbishop of Melbourne from 1996 till 2001, and responsible for establishing the Melbourne Response to deal with victims of child sexual abuse.

An overflow crowd heard him reject claims that there had been a "culture of abuse" among priests.

"I think the bigger fault was nobody would talk about it, nobody would mention it," he said. He admitted his predecessor as Melbourne archbishop, Archbishop Frank Little, had "mishandled" one abuse case by destroying documents.

Cardinal Pell agreed under questioning that the fear of scandal led to a cover-up.

"The primary motivation would have been to respect the reputation of the Church," he said. "There was a fear of scandal."

He said the Church had been the victim of years of "intermittent hostility from the press" but he said this had helped uncover some of the Church's failings.

In its submission to the inquiry, the Catholic Church said at least 620 Victorian children had been abused by its clergy in the past 80 years.

The cardinal, who was the last of 160 witnesses before the inquiry, said many in the Church did not understand "just what damage was being done to the victims".

"If we'd been gossips, which we weren't ... we would have realised earlier just how widespread this business was," he said.

He agreed that the Church had been slow to address the anguish of the victims.

"I'm certainly totally committed to improving the situation. I know the Holy Father is too," he told the inquiry.

Cardinal Pell admitted that priestly celibacy "might have been a factor in some cases", though paedophilia was also perpetrated by married people in the community.

In the middle of last century, he said, the screening process for seminarians was "much too loose".

Sources:

The Australian

ABC News

The Age

The Australian

Image: The Age

Bishop Peter Connors said his predecessor in Ballarat diocese, Bishop Ronald Mulkearns, made "terrible errors" and showed "great naivety" in moving paedophiles Gerald Ridsdale and Paul David Ryan from parish to parish despite knowing they were child abusers.

"I can't see how a bishop could possibly do the things Bishop Mulkearns did today," said Bishop Connors, who was bishop of Ballarat from 1997 until last year.

Later, when current Bishop Paul Bird said the Church's emphasis was now on victims, Bishop Connors added: "We were listening to insurers and lawyers, who said 'admit nothing'."

Bishop Bird said the diocese had accepted 107 of 116 claims of child abuse, of which 67 were by Ridsdale — who was laicised in 1993 and is eligible for release from jail this year, aged 79.

He said Bishop Mulkearns should have removed Ridsdale from ministry when the first complaint was made against him in 1975.

"From my reading of the accounts it wasn't wilful blindness. It was a tragic mistake on his part," Bishop Bird ssaid.

"He explained it to me.... It was, he believed, the accepted opinion at the time that dismissal was not the first option, but that a person might be referred for treatment in the hope that they can correct their behaviour."

Bishop Bird said Bishop Mulkearns had decided not to appear at the inquiry because he "had a stroke some years ago and his ability to concentrate or remember details is now quite limited".

The inquiry chairwoman asked whether Bishop Mulkearns still regularly said Mass. Told yes, she required that he appear at a future date.

The Catholic Church's insurer told the inquiry it has paid out about $NZ36 million to 600 victims of child abuse in Victoria. Catholic Church Insurance chief executive officer Peter Rush said it refused to make payouts for offences that occurred after the date the Church had knowledge of an offender.

Sources:

The Age

The Age

9News

Facing the Truth (Catholic response to inquiry)

Image: The Age

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

Most cases concern sexual abuse by Catholic brother, Robert Best and former priest Gerald Ridsdale.

"An inquiry would horrify the community", Vivian Walker told the Australian.

Dr Walker said "there has been an epidemic of abuse going on for a long time and the church has shown a great reluctance to do anything about it."

"The Christian Brothers were aware of the problem and they did nothing about it."

The Archbishop of Melbourne, Denis Hart, said the Archdiocese has good relations with the Police and promises the Archdiocese will cooperate fully should there be an enquiry.

"I reject absolutely the allegations that the Melbourne Archdiocese has covered up crimes," Hart told journalists.

Archbishop Hart said the church encouraged abuse victims to go to police but respected their right to privacy.

"Whilst it is understandable police want all crimes reported, the church had to weigh this against the right of each victim to make their own decision," he said.

"I believe the whole trauma of the abuse and behaviour of the individuals who are the abusers have wrecked people's lives. It's been very difficult for us ... to arrest that," Hart said.

"That is a source of continued pain to me."

Calls for an enquiry grew on the basis of a report released by Victorian police that details suicides of at least 40 people sexually abused by Catholic clergy.

There have been "an inordinate number of suicides which appear to be a consequence of sexual offending," Detective Sergeant Kevin Carson wrote in his report.

Despite mounting pressure, Victorian Premier Ted Baillieu said he is not yet ready to order an enquiry into what he called "very disturbing claims."

Baillieu said the possibility of an enquiry was on the Victorian Government's agenda; however he was not prepared to preempt the decision of the Victorian Attorney General.

Deputy Commissioner Graham Ashton said a submission based on those reports would recommend that the coroner examine the suicides and the response of the church to both the abuse and its aftermath.

Mr Ashton said police were compiling more detailed documents for consideration by the coroner.

"The coroner will examine the broader nature of those suicides and their relevance in relation to the Catholic Church," he told reporters in Melbourne.

"It will be a matter for the coroner as to what she does."

Mr Ashton said it is not fair to say the Catholic Church has been holding things back when they have been asked for them, but, he said, Police believe the onus is on the Church, when they see matters, to let the Police know about them rather than waiting for victims to come to the Police.

Representatives of the Christian Brothers movement were unavailable for comment.

Sources

• The Australian
• ABC Lateline
• SMH
• Herald Sun
• Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne
• Image: ABC Lateline