Australian Royal Commission on Child Sexual Abuse: "Every Case Represented a Person"

In an article entitled "The Catholic Wrap-Up at the Australian Government's Abuse Inquiry," Frank Brennan reports,

Every case represented a person who claims as a child to have been abused by a person of authority in a Catholic institution — whether it be a school, a parish, an orphanage or a children's home. Whichever way the statistics are interpreted in comparison with other institutions, they are appalling. The Catholic Church harbored child abusers in the past, and in numbers which now shock Australians, whether they be Catholic or not. We need to hold the victims clearly in focus, not as statistics or as hard cases, but as individuals, erstwhile vulnerable members of the church community, citizens able to walk tall again because they have been heard, believed and affirmed.