The Catholic Church's insurance company has been accused of dictating policy towards child abuse victims to reduce risk of culpability, with allegations an official even boasted of destroying 40 boxes of personnel records.
A US psychologist, who during the late 1990s helped the church draft its Towards Healing protocol, has told ABC's Lateline program that Catholic Church Insurance (CCI) attended every meeting of the National Committee for Professional Standards, and attempted to influence the approach to victims.
Dr Robert Grant said CCI officials would object to language used in the Towards Healing document "that would put the church at risk in terms of admitting culpability".
"At first I thought maybe they were there to advise the church about the risk of taking certain pastoral stances, but I began to realise quite quickly that they were dictating policy," he said of the meetings which took place in 1996 and 1997.
When Dr Grant raised his concerns that the church was not being more honest and transparent in its approach to victims, one CCI official told the committee: "I need to remind the members ... that I just destroyed 40 boxes of personnel records."
"I was shocked, I was dumbfounded, not only the timing - I realised it was a statement to me how things were going to be run," Dr Grant said.
CCI chief executive Peter Rush told the ABC he had no knowledge of Dr Grant or his claims.
"I do not accept that any senior officer of CCI would have engaged in the inappropriate destruction of documents," he said.
Francis Sullivan, chief of the Catholic Church's Truth, Justice and Healing Council, told the ABC that "any official of any organisation that destroys records should be sanctioned".
The Truth, Justice and Healing Council was established by the church to co-ordinate its response to the royal commission into child sex abuse.
