Church launches new company to protect children and vulnerable adults
The Catholic Church has established a new independent agency that will set, audit and report the complience of diocese and religious orders with child and vulnerable adult protection standards.
It will provide, for the first time, a transparent and rigorous process by which the community can determine if a diocese or religious order is fully compliant with both statutory child protection requirements and also standards designed specifically for Catholic bodies such as seminaries and parishes.
The Archdiocese of Melbourne has doubled the maximum compensation payment to people sexually abused as children by clergy in the Melbourne Archdiocese to $150,000.
Abuse survivors who have already received payments under the Melbourne Response can also have their cases reviewed to determine if they are eligible for additional compensation.
It has been a big week for the Catholic Church in Australia with two significant announcements – the launch of Catholic Professional Standards and the release of details around significant changes to the Melbourne Response.
Victorian secondary students will be instructed to watch for signs they are being groomed for sex, as new figures reveal that schools across the state reported 258 suspected cases of sexual abuse in 2015.
In a suite of new guidelines published by the Education Department, students will be warned that a perpetrator could be "someone who you like or trust, someone you've known for a while" and that grooming was an adult's attempt "to prepare you … for sexual activity at a later time".
Commission public hearing into criminal justice issues
The Royal Commission will hold a public hearing in Sydney starting from Monday 28 November 2016 looking into the issues raised in the its consultation paper on criminal justice.
It will also examine the experience of a survivor in the criminal justice system in a recently concluded prosecution in New South Wales.
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