By Joanne Mccarthy
Newcastle Herald
October 7, 2011
http://www.theherald.com.au/news/local/news/general/church-documents-reveal-plan-to-shunt-hunter-paedophile-priest/2316873.aspx
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THE Catholic Church considered a ‘‘one-way ticket to England’’ for notorious Hunter paedophile priest Denis McAlinden almost 40 years after a bishop was first told of his offending, and in response to mounting evidence he was a predator of very young girls.
The ‘‘solution’’ to the McAlinden problem was discussed by senior church officials in the early 1990s, Newcastle police command’s Strike Force Lantle has been told.
The ‘‘one-way ticket’’ option was proposed after national publicity was generated when the priest was charged with child sex offences in Western Australia in 1992.
Although McAlinden successfully defended the charges, the church took the first step towards removing him from the priesthood in 1993 and discussed sending him from Australia.
Documents obtained by the Newcastle Herald and handed to police show that two years later, in October 1995, senior Australian church officials had roles in an attempted ‘‘speedy’’ secret defrocking as police investigated another Hunter paedophile priest, Vince Ryan.
The documents included letters in which McAlinden was assured his ‘‘good name would be protected by the confidential nature of this process’’ and the secret defrocking was ‘‘for the good of the church’’.
Strike Force Lantle was established to investigate church handling of the McAlinden case.
Detective Acting Superintendent Wayne Humphrey said police had ‘‘amassed a large amount of documents which has opened a number of further lines of inquiry’’.
‘‘It’s a particularly involved and complex investigation,’’ he said.
People with information are encouraged to contact police.
Other documents seen by the Herald show a Hunter couple told a bishop in the early 1950s that McAlinden had sexually assaulted their primary school-aged daughter three times.
The assaults occurred only four years after he arrived in Maitland-Newcastle diocese from Ireland in 1949, aged 26.
A warrant was issued for McAlinden’s arrest in 1999 when the woman reported the sexual assaults to police, who were advised by the church that the priest was not in Australia.
Maitland-Newcastle diocese paid the woman more than $130,000 in compensation in 2002. Another McAlinden victim was paid compensation the following year.
Although Catholic church representatives advised repeatedly that they did not know where McAlinden was living from the time the arrest warrant was issued, he died in a church-run facility in Western Australia in late 2005.
A woman who was sexually abused by McAlinden in the 1960s, when the priest took a group of very young Upper Hunter girls to Newcastle baths, recalled last week when McAlinden was sent by the church to Papua New Guinea for four years from 1969.
‘‘When I asked why he went my mother said, ‘He’s not a nice man. They’ve sent him to the missions’,’’ the woman said.
A woman who was repeatedly sexually assaulted by McAlinden in the 1960s from the age of five said she tried not to think about the priest but was ‘‘angry that people covered it up’’.
The Newcastle Herald has seen evidence that the church ordered a psychological evaluation of McAlinden in the late 1980s.
The evaluation was made two years after the priest was moved from an Upper Hunter parish to Port Stephens after allegations of child sexual abuse.
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