The Catholic church in Australia is defending small compensation payouts for dead priests’ alleged abuse.
In June, the New South Wales courts permanently stayed a civil claim brought by a survivor, known as GLJ, who alleged horrific abuse at the hands of Father Clarence Anderson in Lismore in 1968 when she was 14.
The court ruled there could not be a fair trial because Anderson was dead, leaving the church unable to respond properly to the survivor’s allegations.
Anderson, a known abuser, died in 1996.
The Church argued that the delay in coming forward means it is unable to investigate the victim’s accusations, making a fair trial impossible.
The Guardian does not detail the amount of compensation that was offered.
Some church bodies in Australia carry insurance that also covers sexual abuse.
Victims’ lawyers say the Catholic church has adopted an increasingly aggressive approach to alleged victims, using recent rulings to pressure survivors to accept “paltry amounts” or risk having their claims permanently blocked.
The pursuit of stay applications in such cases appears to be particularly prevalent in New South Wales.
A review of recent cases shows at least five in which the Catholic or Anglican church have raised the death of an alleged paedophile priest, brother, or teacher to argue that the case against them should be permanently stayed.
Grace Wilson, a partner at Rightside Legal, a firm that regularly deals with abuse cases, said the church had become increasingly desperate in its tactics, describing stay applications as the “latest effort to encourage survivors to go quietly.”
Wilson describes it as “pretty galling to survivors for the Church to say, ‘Our paedophile priest, whom we did nothing to deter, is dead and we can’t properly defend the claim because of that,’” she said.
The Catholic church and its lawyers were contacted for comment over the small level of payouts. However, in a statement following the GLJ case, it said it could not comment due to the potential of a high court appeal.
The church said its strategy for responding to child abuse claims would “continue to be guided by the unique facts and circumstances of each case”.
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