Church adviser says insurance company dictated protocol on how to treat victims of clerical abuse

Yahoo! Australia ^ | August 8, 2013 | Steve Cannane and Sashka Koloff

[Alex Murphy]

A psychologist who advised the Catholic Church committee that deals with sexual abuse says the church's insurance company dictated how victims should be treated under the Towards Healing protocol.

[SNIP]

...he was disturbed by how much influence Catholic Church Insurance had in formulating the church's protocol.

"When I came into the process somewhere in 1996/97, CCI was at every meeting," he said.

"They either had one or two of their senior representatives, and/or a lawyer at each of the meetings I attended.

"They would object to any language that was used in the Towards Healing document that would put the church at risk in terms of admitting culpability.

"At first I thought maybe they were there to advise the church about the risk of taking certain pastoral stances but I began to realise quite quickly that they were dictating policy."

After becoming concerned that the church was pursuing a legalistic approach towards victims, Dr Robert Grant says he addressed the committee, arguing that the church would be better off in the long term if it was transparent and honest.

Dr Grant says he was floored by the response.

"A senior official at CCI stood up immediately after and said 'I need to remind the members of the committee that I just destroyed 40 boxes of personnel records', and I was shocked, I was dumbfounded," he said.

"Not only the timing - I realised it was a statement to me how things were going to be run - but I was even more shocked that no-one on the committee saw any contradiction between what I just said and what this senior CCI official had said."

[SNIP]

The Bishops Conference receives dividends from Catholic Church Insurance and oversees the committee. The committee itself is part funded by the insurance company.

[redgolum]

That is what insurance companies do.

Can’t talk to much about it, but the scene in the article doesn’t surprise me. When you shift the liability to a third party, they demand a large part of control to go with it.

[Alex Murphy]

That is what insurance companies do. Can’t talk to much about it, but the scene in the article doesn’t surprise me. When you shift the liability to a third party, they demand a large part of control to go with it.

I agree with you. Insurance companies are there to mitigate the risk of having sponsor assets committed/wiped out early, i.e. having the sponsor go bankrupt before all claims have come forward, which makes it critical for the sponsor to accurately forecasts how many claims they anticipate receiving/paying out on. Generally speaking, the formula is assets divided by number of anticipated payouts equals amount per individual payout.

[DPMD]

Well, clearly the church insurance system is broken. Let’s chuck it all and replace it with Obama-surance for churches. What could go wrong?

[redgolum]

From my admittedly limited exposure to such things, you are right.

I was on the “receiving” end once, and the other side a few times. In my posisiton, I end up being the guy who talks with my counterpart to fix the issue, while the lawyers argue it out.

But chemicals and parts aren't abuse cases.

[Alex Murphy]

From my admittedly limited exposure to such things, you are right. I was on the “receiving” end once, and the other side a few times. In my posisiton, I end up being the guy who talks with my counterpart to fix the issue, while the lawyers argue it out. But chemicals and parts aren't abuse cases.

The full article explains that Catholic Church Insurance (hereafter CCI) was created a century ago, by the Archdiocese, to insure church properties against fire (property loss). CCI is wholly owned by the Archdiocese, is a charitable institution exempt from income tax. Any profits made are paid back to the Archdiocese, but said profits have averaged less than $10K per year, so it would be fair to consider CCI to be a non-profit agency.

When the abuse scandal hit Australia, the church formed the "National Committee for Professional Standards" [hereafter "the Committee"], tasked with drafting an Archdiocese policy document titled "Towards Healing" [hereafter "the Policy"] on how to address clerical sexual abuse.

It's at this point where the article alleges that a scandal exists. Sitting on the board of the Committee have been the CEO, several Directors, and a Project Manager of CCI. A priest who sat on both CCI and Committee boards faced a special inquiry himself, over his failure to take evidence of child abuse to police. The Committee, staffed with numerous people having conflicts of interest, would recommend Policy language that would limit church culpability and liability in the event of future abuse claims, and therefore limit CCI payouts to claimants.

The priest who faced the special inquiry rose to become General Secretary of the Bishops Conference, and one of the Directors of CCI. Said Bishops Conference receives dividends from CCI while overseeing the Committee, which itself receives funding from CCI, which is owned by the Archdiocese, who (presumably) also owns the assets that are being insured by CCI.

Clear as mud?