klik

3-4-2017

Clergy sexual abuse survivor Andrew Collins has called on Ballarat Diocese Bishop Paul Bird to resign after he refuted calls to remove plaques which include the name of disgraced bishop Ronald Mulkearns.

Mr Collins, who went to Rome last year to hear Cardinal George Pell’s evidence at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, called on the Vatican to remove Bishop Bird if he would not resign. Bishop Bird told The Standard it was important to accurately record historical events where the community had gathered to celebrate with Bishop Mulkearns.
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In an emailed statement, Bishop Bird said: “I appreciate the wish of our school communities to show sensitivity to the feelings of victims of abuse. At the same time, I believe it is important to present history as fairly as possible. This means recording the good as well as the bad.

“A plaque for the opening of a school building records an occasion when the bishop came to say a prayer and celebrate with the local community to mark the opening of the school. This was a good thing the bishop did.

“The bishop’s failings have been frequently recorded elsewhere. In my view, the record of something good he did also deserves to be kept intact, namely his visit to celebrate with a local community the opening of their school.”

Mr Collins said Bishop Bird’s comments were insensitive to survivors.

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Senator Murray Sinclair says preserving the record of the wrongdoing committed under the Indian residential school system is the best way to fight back against those who deny its negative impact on Indigenous people.

Sinclair, who was the chief commissioner of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, made the comments to Anna Maria Tremonti, host of CBC Radio's The Current Tuesday evening.

"If we can preserve that record for future generations, then these deniers will have a diminishing population of people who will believe them," Sinclair said

Tremonti asked Sinclair if fellow legislators avoid him in the halls of Parliament as he pushes for the implementation of the 94 recommendations in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission report

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'Lynn Beyak, please stand in my shoes,'

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Sinclair's comments follow a firestorm of controversy around Conservative Senator Lynn Beyak, who sits on the Senate's Aboriginal people's committee.

Wilson shared her own experience being taken to a residential school in 1956. 

"When I was six years old and my brother was five, and we still crawled in our mom and dad's bed, that really did something to us when they took us away to boarding school and we were never to see them for seven years," she said, breaking into tears as two women came to her side.

"I want to let you know it still hurts a lot and I want this person, Lynn Beyak, please stand in my shoes."

Wilson's daughter Ramona disappeared at age 16 and her body was later found in a bush area near the airport in Smithers, B.C. Wilson said her daughter's death, alcoholism among Indigenous people and the over-representation of Indigenous children in provincial care systems are linked to the intergenerational trauma of the residential school system