A clergy survivor says decades after the crimes, victims of sexual abuse by clergy in Ballarat continue to suffer with many still enduring uphill legal battles with the Catholic Church.
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Peter Blenkiron, who was abused by disgraced paedophile Christian brother Edward Dowlan at age 11, said many victims, even those who had received payouts in compensation plans from the church, continued to live in poverty.
His words comes in the wake of revelations the Christian Brothers underpaid almost 170 sexual abuse claimants millions of dollars because they believed they were "going to be taken to the cleaners".
The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse heard on Wednesday, the order was asked to re-examine 201 compensation settlements to victims of child sexual abuse in 2014 and found 165 were too low.
"To me there may have been elements of denial, and we thought we were going to be taken to the cleaners, which we could still," Leader Brother Peter Clinch told the inquiry.
The commission heard the Christian Brothers, had re-examined 165 settlement cases for victims of child abuse, paying out an additional $14 million.
Mr Blenkiron said when he took civil action against the church, the church’s lawyers made life difficult delaying the court the case for as long as possible. He estimated his legal fees to date were in excess of $120,000.
He said the anguish of the court case caused his complex post traumatic stress disorder to worsen and put his family “through hell”.
“They (the church) treat it like a game of cricket or something but it’s peoples’ lives,” he said. “Even to this day, it still a legal game where they give victims what they see as being defendable but not what is compassionate or right.”
The trauma of his abuse caused Mr Blenkiron to lose his ability to earn a living and saw him sell his business. In recent years, an independent assessment undertaken on the financial impacts of his abuse estimated he’d lost in excess of $2 million in earnings and assets.
But Mr Blenkiron,54, counts himself one of the lucky ones. Over the years, he has received some support from an income insurance policy. But his policy ends when he turns 60.
“We struggle as it is but I live in fear that one day I’ll lose my family home,” he said. “But there are so many survivors out there who are on disability pensions, people much worse off than me who are living in absolute poverty. The whole thing is wrong.. it breaks my heart.”
He said an ongoing redress scheme and support system which provided individualised care for victims was paramount.