Hinch Names Alleged Sex Abuse Priest

The Telegraph
July 9, 2012

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/business/breaking-news/hinch-names-alleged-sex-abuse-priest/story-e6freuz0-1226421873981

Another man has alleged that a former NSW Catholic priest, named as "Father F" in media reports, sexually abused him while he was an altar boy in the 1980s.

IN a report aired on ABC's 7.30 program on Monday, a man who wanted to be known only as "Bill" said he was abused by a former Catholic priest in the northern NSW town of Moree during the mid-1980s.

The ABC has previously reported that the accused clergyman was sacked by the church in 2005 after serious sexual abuse allegations and is now a prominent citizen in Armidale.

Hours before the program went to air, Father F's identity was revealed by Melbourne broadcaster Derryn Hinch, who was jailed in the 1980s for naming a Melbourne paedophile priest.

Hinch was last year banned for five months from communicating in any medium after breaching four suppression orders covering the names of two sex offenders.

In the latest allegations, Bill said he experienced abuse ranging from "touching you to you touching him".

"In your sleep you would wake up to him doing things to you," he told the ABC.

"There were times when there was a room full of people ... and he would take the chance while someone turned their head just to touch you."

In 1986 Bill's mother told the local monsignor of the abuse but her claims were never followed up by the church or the police, the ABC reported.

Years later in 2002, Bill said he wrote to Cardinal George Pell about the abuse, and that the most senior Catholic clergy official in Australia had written back to say he had no jurisdiction and that Bill should go to police.

The allegations come just a week after ABC TV aired reports that 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.

Some of the youths he raped went on to lead tortured lives before committing suicide, it's alleged.

ABC TV also reported that Father F attended a meeting at St Mary's Cathedral in Sydney in September 1992 where he met with Sydney priests Father Lucas, Monsignor Usher and Father Peters.

Last week the Catholic Archdiocese of Sydney said it was investigating the meeting.

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