AA vs RCC
In a landmark decision handed down on 11 February, the High Court of Australia has expanded the scope of the Catholic Church’s liability in sexual abuse cases.
When he was 13 years old, a man known as “AA” was abused by an assistant priest of the diocese of Maitland-Newcastle, Fr Ronald Pickin, in 1969. Fr Pickin died in 2015 and was never charged with any offences, although other boys also complained about him later on. He never had an opportunity to respond to the allegations.
AA won his case for compensation in the NSW Supreme Court, but he lost in the Court of Appeal. The justices contended that AA’s account of the abuse did not reach the requisite standard of proof, that the risk of harm was not foreseeable by the diocese, and that the diocese could not be held liable for a breach of a “non-delegable” duty of care if the delegate committed intentional criminal acts.
However, the High Court overruled the Court of Appeal. It accepted the reality of AA’s abuse. More significantly, it changed the legal standard for proving liability in cases like these.
The High Court’s argument makes distinctions which might be confusing to non-lawyers. In short, it declared that institutions have a duty of care to people with “special dependence or vulnerability,” like children in schools and parishes or patients in hospitals and homes.
Furthermore, the court contended the diocese should have foreseen the possibility that Fr Pickin, or any priest, could have harmed the children in his care. It could not be excused even if there was no reason to suspect Fr Pickin in particular may have had a tendency to abuse children.
In the words of Justice Gordon, “where the non-delegable duty is to ensure reasonable care for the safety of a child, the duty-holder does not escape liability when the delegate fails to take reasonable care of the child by an intentional act in circumstances where the delegate should have foreseen the likelihood of injury to the child.”