Child sexual abuse and the Australian Roman catholic church: Using techniques of neutralisation to examine institutional responses to clergy-perpetrated child sexual abuse

Clergy-perpetrated child sexual abuse has emerged as a critical issue on the global stage, demanding widespread public attention and encouraging scrutiny of institutions like the Roman Catholic Church. This thesis uses the theoretical framework of techniques of neutralisation to explore how the Roman Catholic Church as an institution responds to cases of clergy-perpetrated child sexual abuse, and how that response changes over time, through the examination of two case studies – the Ellis case, and the Foster Family case