A Vatican panel is dealing with a backlog of child sex abuse claims in the Catholic church internationally, taking up to three years to hand down findings about alleged perpetrators, a royal commission has heard.
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The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse was told the Vatican is under pressure from Catholics to expedite processing of claims.
Teresa Devlin, chief executive of the National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church, said the length of the process was neither fair on claimants or alleged perpetrators.
"When (a case) goes to Rome, it sits there for a very, very, very long time . . . two to three years," she said.
"That is not justice for anybody . . . I don't think it's justice for the accused. It is not justice for the complainant."
Under Catholic church laws, claims of child sexual abuse meeting a certain threshold must be examined by the Vatican's Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith which decides on disciplinary action.
Under questioning from counsel assisting the commission Gail Furness SC, Ms Devlin said that the Irish Catholic hierarchy had appealed to the Vatican for a way to speed up the process.
"There needs to be some mechanism for expediting that fairly and justly," she said.
The commission heard tighter regulations around child safety had reduced the number of allegations of sexual assault but Ms Devlin raised concerns about clergy downloading child abuse material online.
"If you have an interest in abusing, a sexual interest in a child, and you're still a member of the church, well the only other place to go was to the internet," she said.
"We have had a few examples of allegations emerging about downloading child pornography. . . We have to familiarise ourselves with the risk . . . this is the next threat."
The fifth day of a three-week public inquiry into the Catholic church's response to claims of child sexual abuse heard that the institution will never be risk-free.
"My worry is complacency," Ms Devlin said. "I'm really nervous about people thinking that it's all over. I don't want anybody to think that they can stop being vigilant."
The royal commission has conducted 15 public hearings into Catholic church authorities over the past four years and will use its current case study to examine factors which led to abuse and ways to prevent it.
Figures released on Monday revealed between January 1980 and February 2015, 4,444 people alleged incidents of child sexual abuse related to Catholic church institutions. The commission heard the average time between the alleged abuse and the date the claim was made was 33 years.
Ms Devlin told the commission Irish authorities receive between 170-200 new allegations of child sexual abuse involving Catholic institutions each year.
"I've been once described as the most hated woman in Ireland in the Catholic Church," she said.
"There's nothing more important than making sure children are safe."
The hearing, before Justice Peter McClellan continues.
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