THE Catholic Church has promised to learn from the child abuse scandal at one of its primary schools in Queensland. Toowoomba bishop William Morris, who co-chairs the Catholic Church's National Committee for Professional Standards, says the actions of the principal and diocese officials shows that stricter protocols are needed.
Morris last week sacked the principal and two Catholic Education officials over their mishandling of a 2007 complaint from a student and her father about a teacher who went on to molest 12 other girls.
"I believed our systems, our protocols, were strong and what we have in place protects our children," he tells The Australian.
"But after this case we will have to look at how our procedures across Australia can be tightened so that this doesn't happen again."
Already, the Queensland government, police and even the magistrate who heard the case against the principal are looking at toughening five-year-old laws mandating the reporting to police of suspicions of child abuse.
In the Toowoomba case, magistrate Haydn Stjernqvist acquitted the principal, who admitted not telling police of his suspicions because he had complied with the law.
Stjernqvist said because the principal took the first complaint, he was required only to report it to his governing body, Catholic Education, which he did. If a teacher had received the complaint, then reported it to the principal, the principal would have had to report the allegations to police.
"It follows and is clear that a person in the school or the school's governing body has committed an offence," Stjernqvist said.
Queensland University of Technology associate professor Ben Mathews says existing legislation is "absurdly limited".
"The point is that if the legislation simply required the principal to make the report to police in the first place, without any second step in the process, the blocking of the report could not have happened," Mathews says.
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