Church Sex Abuse Complaint to Police

Sky News
July 4, 2012

http://www.skynews.com.au/national/article.aspx?id=768124&vId=

Allegations of sexual abuse at a Catholic school in Sydney's south have been passed to police by a lawyers' group calling for a royal commission into the scandal-plagued church.

The Australian Lawyers Alliance (ALA) on Wednesday forwarded NSW police a complaint against a teacher at St Patrick's College, Sutherland, who allegedly 'sexually and indecently' assaulted a pupil between 1976 and 1977.

ALA NSW spokesman Andrew Morrison says an internal investigation into the incident by the church was aborted in 2011.

'This is the first (investigation) I've seen where the process was stopped part of the way through, and the inference there is to protect members of the clergy,' Dr Morrison told AAP.

It follows revelations, aired by the ABC Four Corners program on Monday, that the Catholic Church in Australia covered up sexual abuse by one of its priests, named only as 'Father F'.

Dr Morrison said the ALA hoped that handing the matter to police would add weight to calls for a royal commission into the church following the Four Corners report.

The report said Father F was sacked by the church in 2005 after serious sexual abuse allegations but had since become a prominent citizen in the NSW town of Armidale.

It said Father F raped young boys in Moree in the 1980s before being transferred to a parish in Parramatta where he continued to sodomise altar boys.

The ABC said Father F made clear admissions of abuse to three senior priests during a meeting at St Mary's Cathedral in Sydney in September 1992.

As a result of the investigation, Father F was banned from conducting mass, hearing confession and counselling, but the matter was reportedly never referred to police.

Adults Surviving Child Abuse (ASCA) president Cathy Kezelman said the ABC report showed the Catholic Church had failed to report an alleged criminal act to the authorities.

'A royal commission is needed to identify the ways in which cover-ups have occurred and the cost of those cover-ups in human terms,' Dr Kezelman said.

In a statement released on Tuesday night, the Archdiocese of Sydney - the home diocese of Cardinal George Pell, the most senior Catholic clergy official in Australia - said it was 'seeking further information' about the 1992 meeting.