welcome to. sexual abuse in the catholic church is once again in the spotlight was to europe and north america what can be done to make a big thing of the past call mcgoohan himself a survivor insider against sexual abuse is with me today to talk about. the catholic church with reports painting a grim picture of systemic. implying that even high ranking church officials are complicit will pope francis take the fight against abuse personally and break the

system what are the roots of this plague it's eating away at the church now will transform the global conflict. palmo gorman's survivor and fighter against sexual abuse welcome to the show it's great to have you with us today so you have been complaining for accountability of clerical child abuse for more than twenty years what kind of change have you made over this time what are your successes. well i think our gracious success has been finally exposing the fact not just that the abuses happened on us on the scale that we've been talking about for many years but that it's endemic within the roman catholic church that it's systemic. and that the cover up of abuse by church authorities was a willful intended program that was designed to protect the institution and its power and its money and that it was operated and directed by the vatican at the global level and that it's been

a global cover up i think that's something we've not very clearly exposed so we're going to go through all of that step by step but first ireland is a very catholic country when you came out publicly about your deal when you see at the vatican where you supported by the irish or catholics around the world it was a makes generally speaking when i when very public. i made a documentary with a european television station in two thousand and two and when that aired there was a very very strong in support of response from people here in our in our into particular but of course there were people who didn't want me to speak about what was happening i mean i got people warning me that i should spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder i got death threats but in the main i got a huge amount of support i think people were uphold not just stuff the the the crimes of rape and abuse that reflected on me and many others by the priest in my own case with more by the cover up of those crimes the facilitation of them the

collusion with them and that we were able to expose that by catholic bishops and indeed by the vatican itself so how hard was it for you to make your case how did church resistance change things for you were you prevented from speaking out. what was i mean first of all it was very difficult to get to the point where i could challenge my own. i suppose internal inhibitors the the the own spoken authority of the church wasn't something that was external to me it was internal so when i first start to think about in the mid one thousand nine thousand about one thousand nine hundred four about doing something about what had happened to me more than a decade earlier. my first instinct was to contact the bishop from as opposed to contacting the police so i had bought into this idea that the church was the ultimate authority and that it was it was to them that i needed to look to thankfully i didn't instead i decided about six months later in february one thousand nine hundred five that i would make a complete complaint directly to the police here in arlington that's what i did.

the priest who would abuse me the priest who raped me when i was fourteen years of age was known to be a sexual abuser when he was ordained a priest and the church knew about his offending behavior and they were doing to me he continued to abuse from these ordination right through his entire career as a priest and he was still a priest and active ministry when i went to the police in one thousand nine hundred five he was only removed from ministry immediately after the the church's response to what i and others were alleging was to first of all deny deny that abuse happened then to deny the idea that they knew anything about abuse of the that they understood us and when they finally had to acknowledge that abuse was happening they tried to suggest this was just a few bad apples this was about a couple of you know bad people who had infected the priesthood and were doing terrible things. when we called from when i campaign for accountability on the part of the institutional church there was an effort to suggest that the church was

above the law that the state could not investigate the church that the church was protected from any kind of station vesta geisha and indeed the church asserted here in ireland and it's done across the world that their own rules canon law the internal law of the church is superior to the law of the state in any jurisdiction . within which they operate so we have to get over that and of course there are all the accusations of being dishonest of being deceitful of being anti catholic of trying to undermine the church. of being a liar of being a fan to the retard my personal integrity all of that kind of thing was so based on everything that you have cite right now are these the only reasons or is there like something else that actually makes victims of child sexual abuse choose to report the crime many years later like you did as well. well i suppose the first thing that i've worked also clinically with with people have been sexually assaulted my background actually as a psychotherapist working with the terms of sexual violence i've never worked with

an adult or child victim of sexual violence who hasn't somehow spoken of what happened to them now in the context of children they speak of their smore behaviorally them verbally because they don't have a language to explain what's happened to them i mean even when i was fourteen years of age this was back in one nine hundred eighty one there wasn't a language available to me to allow me to understand never mind explain part of happened and what this man was doing it was an incredibly frightening confusing threatening time in my life when suddenly the act that he perpetrated upon me. called into question everything that i believed about the world i mean up until that point i'd been told some fairly fundamental things as fact warm but the church was good and the priests above all were good and were never to be questions they were absolutely good to that if i behaved myself and was a good person everything would be ok three that adults would only ever hurt me if i did something wrong so therefore if i've been heart i must have done something

wrong and then suddenly i'm raped by a catholic priest that was there was no way i could understand that never mind articulate and i was so shamed by heart it happened. i internalized all of that shame and that silenced me now that was me at fourteen. at six at seven at eight at ten it's going to be even more difficult for children to speak of victims of sexual violence carry the shame of society the shame that society on the perpetrator of the crime. and that shame becomes very internalized and it's very silencing. i should also say that it's very threatening to speak out you know if one knows that the perpetrator and the institution around the perpetrator is incredibly powerful and at the time when up until relatively recently the concept of church was more powerful than the state of the conflict church was more powerful than our parliament when it came to what happened within

our society. but it's a fairly intimidating institution to challenge so we're now seeing a flurry of sex abuse scandals around the catholic church once again most of that church that has been accused of covering up sexual abuse to german church is mired in the number of sexual abuse scandals there's another case in france some more american scandals popping up with federal law torn is a lot of what is behind the latest wave. well you just see more and more revelations i mean i think what's significant finally is that we're seeing state authorities federal authorities in the united states have announced that they've opened up the department of justice has opened up an investigation into pennsylvania and it's believed that investigations into other states at the federal level will also follow. but there has for whatever reason been a reluctance on the part of states to step in and investigate these crimes and in particular these cover ups that finally happened in australia recently one of our big successes from two thousand and two on was winning those inquiries here in

aren't so i campaign for an inquiry known as the friends inquiry in two thousand and two but finally got up and running in two thousand and three and reported in two thousand and eight and it was one of the first such inquiries to look at the role of both the church and state authorities in the management of concerns our suspicions our complaints of child sexual abuse perpetrated by roman catholic priests here in ireland and that found very deep and systemic failures within the church but also within state law and policy in practice but also pointed the finger at the vatican so states need to step in and that's only happening more recently but of course what's also critical is that as soon as a victim speaks of a soon as somebody decides to speak publicly provides an opportunity or an opening for all there is to speak. and that's been very significant it's you know i'm i'm twenty one twenty four years more nearly twenty five years at this point since i went public and spoke about this for the first time and it never ceases to

amaze me that every time i speak on this i get contacted by people who say me too who say that. i never thought i could speak about this but now i think that i have to. so it's the opening up of us really the breaking open of silence allows people to speak but also the the new laws that are being. made for this kind of cases have a lot of loopholes in them for instance in pencil ennia which like you mentioned has seen the. as wave of child sex abuse revelations a law is in the works which on one hand will allow the dems to sue their predators even if the abuse is beyond the statute of limitation but only other the victim will only be allowed to sue a person not an institution so what sense will this law make for victims of their predators maybe dad by the time anyway there's no one to bear responsibility for what happened to them. well i think that's why we have to be very clear about the critical obligation of states so if we look at what international law says about

states it's for the state to guarantee access to justice and remedy for victims of human rights violations and obviously the rape or sexual assault of a child or of any person is a human rights violation so in however a state is going to put in place a remedy to guarantee access for justice that has to guarantee access and blocking . remedies involving institutions is problematic but i can also see why from the point of view of taking on the roman catholic church it might be important to begin to identify named individuals because for example the catholic church has so many different personalities legal and otherwise that it can be very hard to identify how the institution is to be sued so when i decided i would sue the pope i had to work out what am i going to sue the pope as the bishop of rome i'm going to sue him as the supreme pontiff of the roman catholic church i'm going to sue the legal personality of the holy see which has observer status of the united nations i'm

going to sue the vatican city state and him as head of the vatican city state which personality will i pursue and we've seen in australia and even efforts to do the same here in our land where catholic diocese of effectively said well you can't sue us because we don't exist we are not legal persons they're not incorporated they don't exist as an eagle entities with any kind of. statues and so they can be very very difficult to pursue the church has been very good for two thousand years at a developing structures and mechanisms that allow it to be accountable to find a way to not be held accountable for its failings on its own crimes and it can be tricky to find laws and to design laws that can hold a property accountable but it's the obligation of states to do the. right we're going to take a short break right now when we're back we'll continue talking to a warm and. survivor and fighter against sexual abuse talking about the sex abuse crisis in the catholic church stay with us.

prosecution will need to be. called where you. just read you'll find. by the number one place you do i mean jani i mean political pressure on the. security industry. bundled up business models used by american corporations. to use. the solution.

in association. with deleting to an investigative documentary. ghost war on obscene. thing about saudi arabia is they the oil as a weapon and they get too close to investigating what's going on there they push the price of oil up now on the last ten years because of fracking in america america position to stop us energy independent and no longer subject to the political pressures that can be borne upon them from opec and the saudis so we're going to see a real test of this because. all of the litany of horrors coming out of saudi arabia is making people feel. franking gave

america a lot of job opportunities i needed to come up here to make some money twenty five thousand dollars as a teacher or i could be fifty thousand dollars a year trucks or chose to truck people rushed to a small town in north dakota was among the employment rate of zero percent is like a gold rush it is very very similar to. this beautiful story ended with pollution and a lot of people have left here i don't know too many people here anymore slowdowns for most of the last jobs that laid off the american dream is changing that's not what it used to be. and it's a tough reality to deal with. now

we're back with call no bormann survivor and fire again sexual abuse discussing they were the question still latest revelations of child sex abuse for a catholic church a call one pope francis was elected in two thousand and thirteen he called for decisive action in tackling the issue of child sexual abuse do you feel that the action has been taken. frankly no i think francis has been enormously disappointing on this issue and i don't say that with any pleasure i admire much of what he has to say on a whole range of social justice issues from refugees to people on the margins to poverty. to discrimination i think he's a strong advocate for a whole range of issues but on this issue he's been he's been enormously disappointing for example when he went to chile a couple of years ago a country that's been really blighted by revelations of sexual abuse and cover up of those crimes within the roman catholic church there and when victims spoke out

about the appointment of a bishop who had known who was known to have covered up the abuse of a perpetrator by a priest rather than honestly respond to that charge and address it the pope accused the victim of spoken up of slander he accused them of comedy which means slander and he attacked their integrity now afterwards when there was a huge public reaction to that he rolled back and said oh well i haven't been properly briefed by bishops and i've been misled by them before i before i travel to well you know that's either dishonest or it's incompetent the vatican itself had carried out investigations into that case as early as twenty eleven and for many decades now it has been an obligation on bishops to report any allegation of the sexual abuse or rape of a child or minor to the vatican which decides how that case is to be handled and much of happen next so the vatican had chapter and verse on modern happened in chile francis knew he was going to a country where the abuse issues were a big deal so he either didn't bother to get briefed or he was briefed and decided

to be disingenuous and dishonest in how he responded there none of that look schooled well how do you think that public repentance will help the problem how will it stop perverts from molesting boys and girls. well i think first of all it's i can understand why some people might fixate on the idea of repentance almost from a religious perspective what i'm interested in is truth and justice and frankly love in its in its pop in its truest possible meaning and the kind of principles that churches are meant to be grounded in and the values that they're meant to reflect so i have no desire to see pope francis or any bishop or cardinal are any church leader humiliated. are exposed in that way what i do want them to do is to stand for truth to stand for justice to reveal the facts of what was known of what they knew of how their institution and they responded to these crimes and to make

themselves properly accountable including before the law i wonder if the pope is doing as much as he can in a framework that and the paradigm that he exists for and says i know that in february he's going to simone as bishops counsel to a council to discuss the sexual abuse problem i mean i don't know if that's going to change anything but he's doing that and he has said recently that his efforts are kind of bearing fruit that the number of new cases are law compared to the old ones that they church attitude towards sex abuse has changed and now has a new conscience about it do you feel that he may have a point there i mean it's kind of heart to doubt his sincere conviction. i'm afraid it's not hard to do. the objective evidence is there for why people should first of all pope francis is the last elected absolute monarch on the planet he is an absolute monarchy is the supreme pontiff of the roman catholic church

under church t.c. teaching he is the representative of st peter of god on earth he has that kind of power he has an entire judicial system available to him he has the mecca mechanisms of a state the vatican city state its laws its police force its criminal justice process he has the own questioning loyalty of many many many billions of catholics are millions of catholics around the world he is an incredibly powerful individual with one wart with the stroke of a pen he can change much of church law when it comes to how these issues are to be addressed he has not done so and he's not the first pope to summon bishops to rome and after revelations of scandals are revealed on those huge public outrage pope benedict of the pope john paul the second did us and these summits amount to an awful lot of pictures of people looking solemn and very little change and as far as the suggestion that we can now believe that there's less of us will based on what evidence the church doesn't reveal the number of cases that are reported to us are

i would manage as such there's absolutely no transparency some afraid i don't take any comfort in any assurances from the vatican that they're taking this seriously because to this day no pope has told the plain truth not a single pope no senior representative of the vatican has ever honestly acknowledge the fact of the coverup they've denied they've suggested it's a lie and when they've begun to acknowledge that the myth may have been a cover up in recent years they've pointed the finger to bishops at the local level despite all of the evidence that clearly exposes the fact that this cover up was directed at the most senior level from the vatican i always wonder why those most of this. you ponder upon you think why do all this sex abuse and sex scandals are within the catholic church maybe being celibate is not something that is required for a pris by the bible right now it's not required for critique orthodox church for my

priest has like eight kids so other christian churches do not require celibacy from chris the orthodox church like i said even encourages priests to have families at some point the roman phrase could marry as well if i remember correctly so maybe if it isn't something that is set in stone could it be overturned do you think that could partially help the problem could the pope say one day enough of this and go and find wives well that maybe help get rid of this problem a couple of quick things i mean first of all we know about what's happening within the roman catholic church i think in part because of its size and scale and its global influence the fact that we've been able to expose much of what's happening right across the roman catholic world that's become a huge and significant issue but i should say that as a as a as a therapist i've worked with many people who've been abused within different faiths and within different religious settings and churches so it's not unique to the roman catholic church but the roman catholic church is perhaps unique because of

its global reach and scale. on the question of the link between celibacy and pedophilia i don't think the link is a direct one in the way that you're suggesting as. indeed there's no research to suggest that it has and just personally as a man i don't understand how a requirement to be celibate would somehow turn. an adult into somebody who was sexually assaulted child if i'm in a position where i'm being forced to be celibate and i don't feel that i can manage that i may well decide but i have a clandestine sexual relationship with another adult but not with a child. require our you know needing to break the requirement for some. it's a doesn't turn people into child rapists it perhaps turns people into people who have hidden sexual i don't relationships and you know that there's no link to suggest something between between the two. however the fact. the

catholic church is an institution and the priesthood is a vocation an institution within which one hides one are denies one's sexual south that itself may or may be one of the reasons why he explained people with very dark and sinister aspects to their sexuality or their sexual conduct are attracted to it and equally it's a role that gives and has given people extraordinary access to children and i don't question control and access to children so the ability for a sexual offender to access victims to be free to abuse with with impunity has been extraordinary so i think those are the dimensions of the church its structure the structure of the priesthood the fact that the church not only want to prevent abuse from happening but it will collude in it being corrupt it will facilitate us it is often seen the priest almost as a victim and the child as the temper of the priest it's over it's concern has

generally been for the priest and for the institution of it all for the victim just really briefly because we're running out of time but if you take away the white colors and organs sounds other stories of sexual abuse will end up looking very similar to those who just discussed the way i talk to women who suffered rape in the u.s. military the same attempts to cover up to shame the victim are there it's the same there are many cases of sexual abuse of minors in boarding schools orphanages you mention that as well is the church really that different from the rest of the world and as regards i feel like it's probably maybe a marrow of the society. absolutely no i mean the church at the end of the day despite its proclamation of itself as a divine institution it's a human institution it's run by people it's run by men and we are flawed and we don't always conduct ourselves properly. and institutions generally work to protect themselves on the more powerful institution the more money the more authority the

more position of has the more aggressively and even violently its inclined to protect itself and we see that right across the world i worked for many years in the united kingdom we saw their major investigations into historic abuse of children in council run homes and in homes in institutions that were run by the state their institutions work to protect themselves and again that's why it's incredibly important that we have laws put in place by the states that ensure and demand good child protection practice but also punish those who would cover up or facilitate these crimes as well as those who perpetrate them thank you so much for . your interview for your time for this inside will wish you all the best of luck in everything that you're doing. thank you very much and i hope you succeed for talking to a call. about the crisis the catholic church is going through. child sex abuse revelations that's it for this edition of. next

time. you know we've all in this room the place you go very funny. a co money sixty eight with almost no coal mines left. the jobs are gone ok i was

just said. that it was a lot of these people the survivors of a world disappearing before their eyes. i remember thinking when i was younger that if anything ever happened to the coal mines here that it would become a ghost town but i never thought in a million years i would see that and it's happened it's happened. i've been saying the numbers mean something they matter the u.s. has over one trillion dollars in debt more than ten white collar crimes happen each day. eighty five percent of global wealth you want to be old for rich point six percent market saw thirty percent rise last year some with four hundred to five hundred three per second per second and bitcoin rose to twenty thousand dollars. china is building a two point one billion dollar a i industrial park but don't let the numbers overwhelm. the only numbers you need

to remember is one one business shows you can afford to miss the one and only. trauma has been coming up with a lot of statements saying that the arab states of the gulf should take care of the middle east or other we're still committed to the middle east so there's there's a lot of thinking incoherence is there but i think saudi arabia is hugely important to the united states and i think trump understands that and this is this is exactly what was driving his kind of commentary on the. killing i think that's at the end of the day it's not going to change the status. often there just calls me so i do the. i am not going to.

fall over run. for him out of there. i'm. i'm. the headlines the u.s. justice department claims fifty six year old says our sale has the man detained on suspicion of sending mail bombs to leading political figures and critics of donald trump. with the us presidents trade was showing no signs of abating the old photos japan and china are making the best of a bad situation finding new economic deals together.