It would be fair to argue at the time there was a general inclination to dismiss the complaints of children. Similarly a disinclination to mistrust the once revered position of parish priest may have led to a more general conspiracy of silence in the public, but it cannot make it right or excusable. Moreover those responsible for these same priests seem to have had a combination of morally bankrupt or at least inept responses; concealment for reputation’s sake; feeble attempts at therapeutic “cures” or a niave and seemingly willful ignorance that something was going terrible wrong in the heart of their church. 

There is one constant in all this that has been presented by clergy at the commission; the understanding of the trauma inflicted on children was woefully inadequate. Alongside this was the preeminence of institutions in peoples thinking, culpability automatically avoided or deferred because of hierarchical responsibility, the propriety of position and form muffling the screaming moral imperative. 

The wisdom of hindsight allows us to know the underestimation of other trauma in history has led to similar disasters of consequence; simply calling PTSD “shell shock” and hoping veterans would get over it or worse shooting them as deserters; imagining stealing children from their parents and bringing them up in white institutions would help. These were all grotesque and shameful periods in our history built on a blind acceptance of the status quo. While the royal commission attempts to untangle the level of knowledge and responsibility of the consulters meetings in more hours of cross examination, what is also needed is a study of the times, its institutions and its thinking and how completely they failed children like Paul Levey.