The Courier has long asserted its focus must be on the victims; to hear their stories, learn from their experiences and from these revelations build society-wide preventative measures to ensure they are never repeated. Redress is about a lot more than money and Ballarat has learnt some valuable lessons in this.

From those dark decades and through the grim but cathartic unearthing of countless horrors, it has recognised it is not a problem that will just go away by being ignored or silenced.  In that bold step it has also learnt as a community to support those who once were pariahs. It learnt harmful secrets locked-up simply spread the poisonous legacy of abuse into another generation. It knew with the courage to face up to the enormity of the problem, it could cross that threshold into a world of hope and future solutions, at last shake off the crippling entanglements and subterfuge of the past.   

Redress is not resolved or complete but a near universal recognition that it is essential is a good starting point. The Catholic Church itself has admitted its compensation is still not fair to victims and an independent scheme national scheme was needed.

Slow as the progress has been, recognition is a vital first step and then there are also other issues of equal import to victims; recognition and healing. Here too there is hope and Ballarat for all its shame from the past is also taking exemplary steps on how this might be achieved.

St Patrick’s College and St Alipius Primary School are just too commendable models of the tough but valuable actions which give real meaning to remorse and real hope to recovery.

But if this is a local sign of hope, it also starkly shows how much more work there is to be done on this path of healing. And that will take wider changes, larger resources and higher backing. All the more reason why the declared support of Ballarat’s Cardinal Pell and the distant hierarchy of a beleaguered church must be converted into demonstrable action.