Insight with Karl Faase
Rod Best: Forgiveness Isn't Enough When It Comes To Protecting Children
Beskrivelse
What happens when the church's greatest virtue becomes its greatest blind spot? In one of the most important conversations on faith and institutional responsibility you'll hear, Karl Faase sits down with Roderick Best - a Sydney lawyer who spent decades at the coalface of child protection, and ultimately served as Senior Solicitor for Australia's Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. Rod brings rare insight: the legal mind and perspective of someone who shaped national reform, and the honest thoughts of a committed Christian wrestling with what the church got wrong. This is not an easy conversation at times, but it's a necessary one. Roderick Best is a Sydney-based lawyer with over four decades of experience across private practice and government. He served as the longest-tenured senior child protection lawyer in New South Wales before being appointed Senior Solicitor to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse (est. 2013) — one of the most significant public inquiries in Australian history. A note before you listen: This conversation touches on child sexual abuse and the findings of Australia's Royal Commission. Rod speaks with care and without graphic detail, but if this is a sensitive topic for you, please be aware before listening. Key Moments and Takeaways * The Royal Commission was deliberately scoped to institutional abuse — roughly 20% of all child abuse — because it was actionable. Family-based abuse, the larger problem, is far harder to legislate. * Rod was not surprised by the scale of abuse uncovered — but was surprised by the diversity across denominations, and by research showing celibacy made no statistical difference to abuse rates. * The key risk factor wasn't theology — it was vulnerability. Institutions working with the most vulnerable children had the highest rates of abuse. * The church's instinct to "move people on" rather than report was compounded by disbelief, reputational concern, and over-powerful old-boy networks in church governance. * Professor Patrick Parkinson identified the core theological error: the church drew the wrong line on forgiveness, treating it as a substitute for accountability rather than something that must coexist with structural safeguards. * Rod's framework for the failure is theological: the church forgot it was operating in a post-Fall world. Forgiveness doesn't reset human nature — it requires structures that account for ongoing human frailty. * Working with Children checks, introduced in the lead-up to the Commission, are already showing statistical results — particularly in reducing institutional sexual abuse. * The biggest ongoing child protection issue isn't sexual abuse — it's poverty and neglect, which remain largely unaddressed. * Rod still fields questions from former colleagues who say they "never understood why you go to church." Reputational damage is real and ongoing. * The church's greatest asset in a fragmented, anxious society is community — but it must normalize belonging and be seen as a safe, ordinary place for ordinary people. Find Out More Olive Tree Media: www.olivetreemedia.com.au [https://www.olivetreemedia.com.au/] Watch+ Platform: www.olivetreemedia.com.au/watch [http://www.olivetreemedia.com.au/watch/] Daily Nudge: www.dailynudge.org [https://www.olivetreemedia.com.au/nudge/] Special Thanks To Excelsia University College [https://excelsia.edu.au/] Christian Finance [https://bfs.org.au/] Vision Christian Media [https://vision.org.au/]
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