Priest Helped by His Police Friend to Bring Charges against Boy

By Rory Callinan
Sydney Morning Herald
July 16, 2012

http://www.smh.com.au/national/priest-helped-by-his-police-friend-to-bring-charges-against-boy-20120715-224b0.html

AN ARMIDALE priest suspected of child abuse was assisted by a "mate" who was a policeman to bring blackmail charges against one his former altar boy victims, court transcripts reveal.

The charges resulted in the victim, Daniel Powell, going on trial and appeared to permanently halt police investigations into his allegations of abuse.

Mr Powell was found not guilty of blackmail in 2004 but committed suicide in 2007. The priest, whose name was suppressed during the proceedings, admitted under cross examination during Mr Powell's trial that he had told senior church officials in 1992 that he had sexually abused children.

The Catholic Church's handling of the priest, dubbed Father F, has come under scrutiny after a recent Four Corners investigation. It has raised questions as to whether the church should have reported him to police, rather than taking internal disciplinary action.

The lack of a police investigation has infuriated Mr Powell's mother, Renae, who yesterday called on senior officers to launch an internal inquiry into the situation.

Father F had met 13-year-old Daniel Powell in Merrylands in 1991 when he became an altar boy. The youth had experienced a difficult childhood. When he was 10, his father hanged himself and Daniel found the body.

The priest became friends with Daniel's family and began spending time with him alone and was alleged to have plied him with alcohol, allowed him to shoot guns on church property and then repeatedly sexually abused him.

In 1999 Mr Powell, then an adult, contacted Father F and allegedly demanded money for not reporting the abuse.

After a series of payments, the priest went to a "good mate", a senior sergeant who was serving in Sydney's west, and Mr Powell was charged with demanding money by menaces, according to transcripts of his 2004 NSW district court trial.

Under cross examination, the priest revealed he had contacted the policeman at home and that the officer had "wanted to help as much as he could".

Asked on a scale of one to 10 how good a friend this officer was, Father F said he was "a good mate, eight or nine".

Other police then assisted the priest to set up an operation to arrest and charge Mr Powell. Efforts to contact the senior sergeant were unsuccessful yesterday.

After being charged, Mr Powell complained to police of the priest's abuse. Confirmation of the complaints was revealed in Mr Powell's 2003 committal hearing when the priest said that police had come to his home on October 11, 2003, to question him about Mr Powell's allegations.

But the prosecution then revealed a Detective Andrew Foster, from Armidale Police, had told the prosecution that "they were not going to proffer any charge" against the priest in relation to Mr Powell "at this time". Efforts to contact Mr Foster yesterday were unsuccessful.

Mr Powell's mother yesterday demanded answers over why her son's allegations of abuse never appeared to have been properly investigated.

A NSW Police Force spokeswoman said the force was unable to comment.