Bishop Richard Condie of the Anglican Diocese of Tasmania, an island state in Australia, has expressed further remorse about sexual abuse by clergy, the Australian Broadcasting Corp. has reportado.

Bishop Condie made his remarks in Deloraine, where one priest, the Rev. Louis Victor Daniels, abused boys from the 1970s through the 1990s. Daniels, now 77, is serving a third sentence—this time for six years—related to the abuse. Daniels reportedly told one of his victims that no one would believe a report of rape because he was a priest.

“These are heinous crimes committed by a predator by [means] of terrible breaches of trust,” said Judge Stephen Estcourt of the Supreme Court of Tasmania when he sentenced Daniels in 2023.

In seeking to address some of the damage done by sexual abuse, Bishop Condie said, the church has made 84 payments, for a total of $17.5 million since 2018. He added that the amount is about half of what the church will need to pay in the next decade. The bishop said the church now has some of the “most robust practices of any community organization working with children.”

John Steen, one of the victims of Daniels in the 1970s and 1980s, has responded to Condie’s remarks with skepticism. In 2024 the Supreme Court of Tasmania ordered the church to pay Steen $2.4 million in damages.

“I’m really interested in seeing what happens in this next phase of the apology. … There might be value in it for some people, but I think in some ways the value is more to the church to be seen to be doing something,” Steen said.

“At some point you have to stop apologizing and at some point you have to start owning up to exactly what you did and owning up to all the facts, not just some of the facts,” Steen said.

Steve Fisher, who was abused by the Rev. Garth Hawkins, also was skeptical about the importance of apologies. Fisher is chief executive of Beyond Abuse, which supports victims of abuse and advocates on their behalf.

“The majority of people are so disgusted with the church that it doesn’t matter how many times they apologize, it won’t make a shred of difference,” Fisher said.

“What they did with the paedophiles in the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s by moving them around, and especially with Lou Daniels—they encouraged him and gave him a high position in CEBS,” the Church of England Boys Society. The Anglican Church of Australia was known as “the Church of England in Australia” until 1981.

Bishop Condie said the church is redirecting money to pay for the relief it is sending to victims.

“Every parish in Tasmania will now have a levy on income from investment for the next maybe five or 10 years, which will also build up the funds that are available for redress,” he said.

“We think we can manage it, but it will have a very significant effect on what the Anglican Church in Tasmania is able to do.”

Este artículo apareció originalmente en The Living Church y ha sido reimpreso con permiso.