AUSTRALIA—The Australian Sex Party has issued the following statement regarding its call for a Royal Commission to investigate the extent to which state and federal politicians have been covering up child sexual abuse in the church:
While there are now hundreds of convicted pedophile priests in Australia, there are no convictions for these offences in Australia’s sex industry.
Australian Sex Party President Fiona Patten has claimed that state and federal politicians may have been involved in covering up child sex abuse in the church and called for the Terms of Reference of the Royal Commission to include an examination of the way in which religious institutions may have infiltrated Australian parliaments.
“The Royal Commission needs to look at a register of religious interests for all politicians,” she said.
Patten said that up to 40 percent of federal MPs may be members of the Parliamentary Christian Fellowship and that it was beyond belief that members of this group did not have an understanding of the extent and nature of child sex abuse within their own churches.
Patten has been campaigning for a Royal Commission into child sex abuse in the church from the day her party was registered in 2009. It was one of the Sex Party’s top ten policies and the Sex Party has campaigned hard on the issue at every state and federal election it has contested. No other political party had a similar policy and no other political party has a formal policy of any kind to investigate sexual abuse within the churches.
“The relationship between the church and the sex industry holds many keys to understanding sexual abuse in the church,” said Patten. “The Catholic Church especially has assuaged its guilt over child sex abuse by pointing the finger at Australia’s sex industry and has worked with Catholic and religious politicians to engineer draconian legislation against the sex industry over many years as a kind of smokescreen. Religious groups have used compliant politicians to legislate against sex shops not being allowed to be within 100 meters of a church or school for fear that children will be molested by sex shop patrons and staff. There are no convicted pedophiles in Australia’s sex industry but the church and religious schools are riddled with them and the Royal Commission needs to understand why this is so”.
In 2000, Australia’s national sex industry association, the Eros Association, published the first listing of pedophile priests in Australia, called "Hypocrites," and called for a Royal Commission. The ABC’s Four Corners wrapped a program around the publication and aired an interview with Archbishop Pell, who accused the sex industry of using the issue to sell pornography.
In the aftermath of this publication and its call for a Royal Commission, the Eros Association was inundated with death threats and letters from federal and state MPs calling the action disgraceful and appalling. Federal MPs like Bruce Baird said that Eros had ruined any credibility it had in dealing with the federal parliament, and the call for a Royal Commission was a travesty. Former Tasmanian Senator and champion of the Catholic church, Brian Harradine, refused to answer letters from the Eros Association about child sex abuse in the church.
UPDATE
ABC News is now reporting that Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard has "ordered a federal inquiry Monday into allegations of child sex abuse in state and religious institutions and community groups following a string of sexual abuse accusations against priests and claims of a Catholic Church cover-up."
