SYDNEY (Reuters) - More than 150 victims of sexual abuse by clergy in Australia have come forward in the past two weeks after reports the Catholic Church had paid other victims "hush money," a support group said on Friday.
"I am quite shocked at what we are hearing and the volume of complaints. You can't do more than two hours on the phone, it's too distressing," said Chris MacIsaac, spokeswoman for the victims' group, Broken Rites.
She told Reuters that most of the victims said they were abused as children by Catholic priests and brothers, some as long as 40 years ago and others only 10 years ago.
The revelations are part of a widening scandal that has shaken the global Catholic Church to its foundations, costing clergy their jobs in the United States, Poland, Ireland, Canada and Australia.
"We are only seeing the tip of the iceberg in terms of those who do come forward and speak. Most keep silent about it, they fear rejection," said MacIsaac, herself a victim of clergy abuse.
"We want an independent inquiry because it's the only way we are going to determine how big this problem is -- the church has covered it up."
Sydney's Catholic Archbishop George Pell has said up to 90 priests and brothers had been convicted of sexual abuse in the past six years in Australia, but did not know if abuse in Australia was as bad as in the United States.
Reports of sexual abuse by clergy in Australia have been emerging for more than a decade.The Catholic Church, Australia's biggest, formally apologized to victims of sexual abuse in April 1996. All of Australia's major churches have admitted their clergy have sexually abused children.
"BLACK COLLAR CRIME"
Broken Rites has posted a "Black Collar Crime" list on its Web site (which names 50 priests and religious brothers, plus 13 lay personnel (mostly teachers) who have been convicted of sex offences since 1993.
MacIsaac said the official list was now 76 convicted clergy.
Australia's Catholic Church has come under attack in recent weeks over media reports it paid "hush money" to people abused by clergy. The church has taken out newspaper advertisements in Sydney and Melbourne apologizing for past sexual abuse while fending off claims it had tried to buy the silence of victims.
But a Sydney newspaper published a compensation document signed this year which stipulated confidentiality.
The Catholic St. John of God Order announced on Thursday a $2.1 million out-of-court settlement with 24 mentally handicapped men who were sexually and physically abused.
It said the disabled men, some only teenagers at the time, were abused by up to 20 brothers in three Melbourne institutions run by the order over the past three decades.
The Catholic church had earlier confirmed it has paid A$3.0 million in compensation to 101 sex abuse victims in Victoria state alone since 1996. The total compensation paid in Australia is not known because different systems operate in each state.
Broken Rites staged a street protest outside a Melbourne church on Thursday night as a prayer vigil was under way for victims of abuse by clergy members.
"We don't want prayers, we want action," protester Eileen Piper told Reuters. Piper said her daughter Stephanie, 32, took her life in 1994 after struggling for half her life with being sexually abused by her local priest.
Piper said her daughter was a devout Catholic when she was raped by a priest at the age of 16. The priest was jailed for four-and-a-half years for sex crimes against other girls and boys. Stephanie Piper died before her case ended.
"That priest maimed her and it was only a year before she died that she told me how he had destroyed her life," Piper said.
"I am now an atheist, there is no God for me," she said.