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	Rau Urges Crime Victims to Go to Police Sydney Morning Herald September 15, 2011 http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-national/rau-urges-crime-victims-to-go-to-police-20110915-1kbjf.html South Australian Attorney-General John Rau has urged victims of crime to go to police, saying raising such matters in parliament is "putting the cart before the horse". Mr Rau said independent Senator Nick Xenophon's naming of a Catholic priest accused of rape was also an inappropriate use of parliamentary privilege. He said if someone believed an offence had been committed, particularly against themselves, then they should waste no time in going to police. "They are the proper agency to deal with the matter, they will investigate it, they will collect the evidence, they will provide that evidence to the director of public prosecutions, and the matter will be dealt with on its merits in the courts," Mr Rau told reporters on Thursday. "The idea that without any of those steps being undertaken, a person should be named under parliamentary privilege and given a particular tag, I personally do not think is an appropriate use of parliamentary privilege. "It does raise some very serious issues about whether that is the sort of government that all of us really want here in Australia." Speaking under parliamentary privilege in the Senate on Tuesday, Senator Xenophon defied the Catholic church and named Monsignor Ian Dempsey as one of three priests accused of raping Anglican Archbishop John Hepworth more than 40 years ago. His decision has since come in for criticism from both major political parties, from civil liberties groups and from the legal fraternity. Mr Rau said Senator Xenophon's actions were premature. "We have a system which requires or asks a person who believes themselves to be a victim of a crime to tell the police," he said. "If a person, for whatever reason, does not tell the police, then I would have thought to go to the extreme of having matters raised in a public forum the way they have been is a little bit putting the cart before the horse. "The first port of call is the police, and it should always be the first port of call."
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