The High Court has expanded the responsibility of institutions in cases of historic sexual abuse, in a judgment expected to lead to more legal cases relating to children.

The court found the Roman Catholic Diocese of Maitland-Newcastle could not delegate its duty of care to a child who was abused by a parish priest.

It said the diocese owed the child a duty of care when the boy was under the control of one of its priests, and the risk of injury to a child could have been foreseen in 1969 when the abuse occurred. The diocese should have taken reasonable care to prevent injury.

However, the court set aside a payment of $636,480 awarded by the NSW Supreme Court, ruling the NSW Civil Liability Act applied. It reduced the damages to $335,960 – the limit under the act.

The appellant, known as AA, was 13 when he was repeatedly abused by the late Father Ronald Pickin, who taught scripture at his high school.  

Pickin invited AA and other boys to the presbytery on Friday nights, where he gave them alcohol and cigarettes and let them gamble on a poker machine. The priest sexually assaulted AA on these visits. 

When the Supreme Court heard the case, it held the diocese was vicariously – rather than directly – liable for Pickin’s actions and owed AA a common law duty of care, which it breached through inaction.  

AA appealed to the High Court after the NSW Court of Appeal ruled the diocese did not owe him a duty of care and had no delegable duty to ensure one its priests did not assault a child.

The latest decision will have ripple effects across the legal landscape, according to Colin Biggers & Paisley partner Mathisha Panagoda and senior associate Christian Gorman.

By expanding institutional liability beyond negligence and allowing direct liability for child sexual abuse by a delegated person, the court has shifted the focus away from institutional knowledge/fault towards whether the institution placed the wrongdoer in a position of authority, the child was under the person’s care because of the institutional role, and whether the institution assumed responsibility for the child’s safety, they say.

“Institutions are now judged less by what they knew and more by the relationships of authority and trust they created.”

Read the judgment here.