Loftus joins Cornwall inquiry advisory board

21 August 06

Catholic Register

BY DEBORAH GYAPONG
Canadian Catholic News
OTTAWA

A psychologist who advised the  Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops on its sexual abuse policy document From Pain to Hope has been appointed to the Cornwall inquiry's advisory panel to help the community move toward healing and reconciliation.

Fr. John Allan Loftus, a Jesuit priest and psychologist now based in Boston, will also provide contextual evidence on how the Catholic Church in North America has handled the sexual abuse crisis. He is expected to testify in September or October.

"The issue is much larger than one just of the Catholic Church," Loftus said in a July 31 telephone interview. In Cornwall, abuse allegations have been made not only against Catholic clergy, but also against members of the legal, medical and social services establishment and other institutions.

While Loftus acknowledged some dioceses did not always handle sexual abuse complaints the right way and made many mistakes, he said the Canadian bishops "responded very early to the crisis" when they started working on From Pain to Hope in 1992.

Loftus was the executive and clinical director of Southdown, the Catholic Church's psychiatric treatment centre for clergy and religious in Aurora, Ont., from 1986-1994. He also chaired the psychology department at St. Jerome's College at the  University of Waterloo, prior to becoming president of  Regis College at the  University of Toronto from 1998-2003.

As a panel member, Loftus will assist the inquiry's phase two, which is designed to promote healing in the Eastern Ontario industrial town.

Loftus said he was asked to take part in the healing process not only because of his expertise as a psychologist and priest, but also because he has no connections with people or institutions in Cornwall.

The advisory panel also includes Michael Church of Freelton, Ont., a mentor of sexually abused men; Janet Handy of Toronto, executive director of the Gatehouse Child Abuse Investigation and Support Site; Benjamin Hoffman of Eganville, Ont., a specialist in dispute resolution and consensus-building; Peter Jaffe of London, Ont., academic director of the Centre for Research on Violence against Women and Children at the University of Western Ontario; Gail Gustin Kaneb of Cornwall, a community leader and philanthropist with conflict management skills; and Philip Murray of Ottawa, former RCMP Commissioner.

Phase two of the inquiry will "generally occur outside the formal hearing process" and involves reaching out to the communities in the Cornwall area to optimize future healing and reconciliation, said a July 26 news release from the inquiry.

Loftus sees great improvement all over North America in how the churches have responded to allegations of clergy sexual abuse. "At least as far as I know, the Catholic Church has tried to include the best practices for the protection of young people," he said.

Loftus hopes his phase one testimony will help people to understand the history of how the church tried to respond to allegations. One of the mistakes it made was to treat sexual abuse as a moral failure, the same mistake it had made with alcoholism in the 1950s, he said.

Even his own discipline of psychology only began recognizing the extent of acquaintance pedophilia in the 1980s. Loftus' point of view echoes what other expert witnesses told the Cornwall inquiry last spring about the rampant denial and ignorance surrounding the extent of acquaintance pedophilia in North America.