Research into the behaviour of Catholic clergy treated by the Encompass Australasia clinic in New South Wales was under way when it was closed in 2008, according to a Fairfax Media report.
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.
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