[12] The Bishops Conference established a national co-ordinating body, called the Truth, Justice and Healing Council, to oversee the church's engagement with the royal commission and the pastoral and other ramifications that arose from the sexual abuse scandal.
[20] In September 2020, the Australian state of Queensland passed legislation which makes it so that religious institutions, such as the Catholic Church, and their members are no longer able to use the sanctity of confession as a defence against failing to report material information about the sexual abuse of children.
[29] In 2017, Fr Denis Chrysostom Alexander was arrested in Sydney and faces an extradition to Scotland for sexual and physical abuse he reportedly committed at the former Fort Augustus Abbey in the 1970s.
The extraordinary and shocking story of 'Father F', later to be identified as former Armidale local, and former Catholic Priest John Joseph Farrell, was central to the ABC Television program Four Corners expose "Unholy Silence".
[37] This was first broadcast on Monday 2 July 2012[38] and was potentially the final trigger that led to the then prime minister, Julia Gillard, announcing the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.
[53] On 31 July 2012, NSW Police in Strike Force Lantle announced they would be providing prosecutors with evidence that Father Brian Lucas, general secretary of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference, Archbishop Wilson of Adelaide and Michael Malone, retired Bishop of Maitland-Newcastle, had committed the offence of concealing a serious crime under s316 of the Crimes Act 1900 (NSW) in concealing child sexual abuse by the priest Denis McAlinden (now deceased) in the Maitland-Newcastle diocese.
"[54] In November 2012 the Premier of New South Wales, Barry O'Farrell, ordered a special commission of inquiry into allegations of sexual abuse by Catholic clergy in this diocese and whether the church had hindered police investigations.
The Director of Public Prosecutions had been reported to be considering a challenge in the Supreme Court of New South Wales but on 20 December, announced that there were no reasonable prospects of success of appeal on errors of law.
On 15 February 2017 it was reported that the Catholic Church in Australia had secretly paid the equivalent of $276.1 million in compensation to thousands of people sexually abused as children by priests and religious brothers.
[61] On 6 March 2018, it was reported that Lake Macquarie Strike Force Georgiana detectives charged Maitland-Newcastle priest David O'Hearn, who was previously convicted of 44 sex abuse offences against six boys in August 2016, with nine new counts of aggravated indecent assault.
[64] One notable case involved former Marist Brothers Hamilton student Andrew Nash, who committed suicide at the age of 13 in 1974 in what his mother believed was a result of trauma from sexual abuse.
[73] The Illawarra Mercury reported lawyer Chris Murphy suggesting that the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse investigate the case of Nestor.
[75] In 2017, Marist Brother and former principal of the Mary Immaculate Catholic Parish Primary School in the Sydney suburb of Eagle Vale, pleaded guilty to four counts of sexually abusing a minor.
[80] William Stanley Irwin, 55, for instance, a former Catholic brother, was convicted on 31 March 2011 by a jury in the Sydney District Court on two counts of gross indecency on a male under the age of 18 at St Stanislaus' College in Bathurst in the mid-1980s.
Having been asked by the boy's parents to counsel him in relation to prior sexual abuse, Irwin kissed the youth and initiated mutual masturbation when the pair stayed at the boarding school overnight during a road trip in 1986.
[90] He noted that though the Melbourne Response states on its website that in the past 14 years the church has compensated 300 people as victims of sexual abuse and identified 86 offenders of whom 60 were priests, not one complainant was referred to Victoria Police.
[90] The report stated that the process of moving offenders to other positions in the church restricted capacity to bring them to account and promoted a culture of secrecy that hindered more victims speaking out.
[116] It had been previously revealed in 2014 that the Catholic Church in Australia concluded in 1997 that Searson sexually abused both boys and girls when he was teaching at Holy Family Parish Primary School in Doveton in Melbourne's south-east.
The Melbourne report found that Peter Connors, a former Bishop of Ballarat, was part of a culture that practiced "using oblique or euphemistic language in correspondence and records concerning complaints of child sexual abuse".
[125] The Levey said he was "sexually abused all the time just about every day" and the Commission heard evidence that Ronald Mulkearns was among a number of clergy who knew Ridsdale had a boy living with him, but failed to intervene.
[144] On 15 August 2017 Ridsdale pleaded guilty to 23 charges including two counts of rape and one of buggery, for abusing 12 children, 11 boys and one girl with ages ranging from 6 to 13, between 1962 and 1988 in the Victoria state city of Ballarat and the surrounding area.
[154] Despite the fact that his sex abuse convictions related to his time in the Archdiocese of Melbourne were later overturned, Pell still faces 10 civil lawsuits, with some stemming from his time in the Diocese of Ballarat[155][156] The overturning of Pell's Melbourne conviction also did not prevent the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) from releasing a statement defending the accuracy of Revelation, stating that "The ABC has—and will continue to—report accurately and without fear or favour on stories that are in the public interest, including this one.
[161] On 8 May 2020, it was revealed that Claffey was still serving a prison term for the sexual abuse of 14 children between 1969 and 1992 and that at least one of his victims, Joseph Barrett, was granted a settlement of $35,000 after filing a lawsuit against the Diocese of Ballarat.
[20] On 6 May 2020 it was revealed that the newly disclosed portions of the royal commission report found that Pell had attempted to protect Ridsdale from potential prosecution by transferring him when he was a priest of the Diocese of Ballarat.
[117] Pell had also said to the commission that he "didn't do anything about it" when a young schoolboy told him that Brother Edward Dowlan was sexually abusing him, but also tried to hide the fact that it was also in part his duty to assist in the investigation.
[162] According to the report's newly disclosed details, which were made public on 7 May 2020, by 1973 Pell was "not only conscious of child sexual abuse by clergy but that he also had considered measures of avoiding situations which might provoke gossip about it".
[173] In 1995, Gerard William Dick, a self-confessed sexually abusive priest, was sentenced to three-and-a-half years' jail for 10 incidents of indecently dealing with boys aged between 8 and 10 at a Christian Brothers' orphanage in Western Australia.
[175] In 1994, the Parliament of Western Australia was presented a petition with 30,000 signatures which demanded an inquiry into the sexual and physical assault that took place in various institutions run by the Christian Brothers including Castledare Boys' Home, Bindoon, Clontarf and Tardun.
[178] In January 2019, retired Perth priest Allan John Mithen received a 13-month suspended prison sentence after pleading guilty to two counts of sexually abusing an Aborigine girl at a mission in 1965.
[183] Notable cases include: in 2007 Gregory Ferguson was sentenced to two years' jail (eligible for parole after 12 months) for offences in 1971 against two boys aged 13 at Marist College, Burnie, Tasmania.