Responding to child sexual abuse doesn’t impede mission, it is the mission of the church, said a panel of guests discussing the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse at the Re:Thinking conference in Sydney this week.

Facilitated by ABC’s Rachael Kohn, the panel, which included clinical psychologist Sue Bartho, barrister Garth Blake, journalist Joanne McCarthy and Bishop Geoffrey Robinson, explored the impact of the Royal Commission on the church, how it is responding and what the future holds for the issue.

Garth Blake, who also chairs the Professional Standards Commission of the Anglican Church in Australia and has initiated the adoption of the Charter for the Safety of People within the Churches of the Anglican Communion, said there is a “real issue fatigue on the part of church leaders”.

“I think it’s very, very wearing, dealing with this issue week in and week out,” said Blake. “And certainly on the part of some, there’s a thought of ‘Let’s get over this. Let’s move on to real mission’. And yet, to my mind, this is real mission. If we can’t keep our people safe, there is a fundamental disconnect between our mission and what we say and preach.”

Joanne McCarthy, who has won several media awards for her reporting of child sexual abuse within institutions, and led the campaign for a royal commission, said trust is one of the biggest issues facing the church and victims of institutional abuse.

“Trust definitely has moved away from churches … you only have to look at some of the evidence at the Royal Commission to see why. They keep saying they’re confronting the issue. They are not.”

McCarthy says society is cynical, and getting more so, particularly when it comes to the church. “Losing faith in faith itself is almost like the final point. It’s like, ‘Ok, we’ve reached the bottom’. And now we have to work our way back up.”

Bishop Geoffrey Robinson, himself a victim of child sexual abuse, said he’s been disappointed with the reaction from many within the Catholic church in particular, who talk of the Royal Commission as a hurdle to ‘get behind us.’

“They talk about a ‘new evangelisation’, but my reply is, ‘forget it’. Nobody’s listening. Not until you really confront this issue and try to overcome it. I do not believe we’ve really reached that point.”

The extent of institutional child sexual abuse being revealed by the Royal Commission is, indeed, enormous. Psychologist Sue Bartho recounted figures from Child Wise Australia for 2013, that suggest 33 percent of girls and 16 percent of boys experience non-contact (exposed to images or body parts) or contact abuse (touching), while 12 percent of girls and 8 percent of boys have experienced penetrative abuse. However, she notes there are still major issues around reporting.

“It’s hugely underreported. There’s a lot of shame associated with the experience of abuse, as well as exposing it. Most people think these numbers are very conservative.”

A key theme of the past few weeks at the Royal Commission has been the issue of compensation, with Cardinal George Pell’s comments that victims should be able to sue the Catholic Church sparking a debate over the legal implications of such an action.

But aside from monetary compensation, Sue Bartho said we should not underestimate the power of a genuine apology and the impact that a victim being able to tell their story can have in the healing process. She was in the room in one such occasion when the then-Anglican Archbishop of Sydney apologised on behalf of the church to a female victim of sexual abuse.

“It was just a very beautiful, human moment in time.

“He was generous with his time and he’d obviously listened to many victims. He knew the issues, but could listen to her story and … reflect back to her the shame and the silencing, and the humiliation that she had experienced. I could almost see in the room the scales being a little bit rebalanced.

“When you’ve taken on board these ugly messages of worthlessness, and been silenced and used, to have a representative of the church take time and grace to hear you, was beautiful.”

But when asked whether the church had experienced a “watershed moment where it’s faced the evil within it and can fix it”, Garth Blake said solving the problem is a long way off.

“If anyone thinks that a Royal Commission or church policies can solve this problem, they’re sadly mistaken. I think it’s endemic in human nature. But I think through effective policies we can reduce the incidence. But recovery of public trust on the part of churches and other institutions will be a long process. People are not just looking for apologies and support, they are looking for effective action and demonstrated responses.”

Blake says it is going to take “a generation or more” to see a change of culture that will rid the church of deep-seeded attitudes about child sexual abuse.

“Eternal vigilance is what’s required, and a change in the culture so that people—our church leaders—are all passionate advocates for the protection of children, not just risk managers. We need an attitudinal change.”

It is Blake’s hope that churches of tomorrow will be known as exhibiting best practice in this area.

“We had a dark side in our past, but we faced it,” he says of what he hopes the next generation can say in their churches.

“It’s only through shining light in darkness that there will be change. It’s very important that we own, without excuse, the terrible things that have happened. But we can be different. We need to show the public that we can be trusted. But that will need to be earned.”

The full panel discussion from Re:Thinking will be broadcast on ABC Radio National’s ‘The Spirit of Things’ on Sunday 23 March at 6.05pm.