Calls Multiply for Inquiry into Handling of Sex Abuse

By Linton Besser, Joanne McCarthy
Sydney Morning Herald
August 1, 2012

http://m.smh.com.au/national/calls-multiply-for-inquiry-into-handling-of-sex-abuse-20120731-23d4p.html


PRECISELY six months after the paedophile priest Denis McAlinden was reprimanded but not reported by the church over allegations of child sex abuse, Father Brian Lucas told the Wood Royal Commission that "to engage in a cover-up … is the very worst way of approaching it".

Now Father Lucas, the general secretary of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference, is one of three senior Catholic officials being investigated by police detectives over the concealment of McAlinden's offences in the 1990s.

Strike Force Lantle is due to deliver a brief of evidence to prosecutors in the next few weeks.

Between 1993 and 1995, Father Lucas, the former bishop of Maitland-Newcastle Michael Malone and Father Philip Wilson, now an archbishop, had roles in an attempted defrocking of McAlinden over the sexual abuse of young girls but failed to report him to authorities.

Despite an "admission" he made to Father Lucas, McAlinden was sent a letter as part of the censure process promising that "your good name will be protected by the confidential nature of this process". Archbishop Wilson has declined to undergo a police interview.

Father Lucas suggested to the Herald yesterday he had been asked not to report McAlinden to the authorities. In a carefully worded statement, he said: "Serious issues arise when victims tell you that they do not wish you to go to the police."

The revelations prompted further calls from sex abuse victims, trauma counselling groups and politicians for a judicial inquiry into the church and its handling of abuse cases.

"A royal commission must now be urgently established to uncover the full extent of the church's systemic failure to deal with decades of child sexual abuse committed by priests in dioceses in NSW," the Greens MP David Shoebridge said.

Hunter man Lou Pirona, whose son John was sexually assaulted by a priest as a child and died last week after leaving a letter saying he was in "too much pain", said: "Any inquiry that unearths the people who did these things to children, and those who hid it, is not only desirable but necessary."

A former police officer and Nationals MP, Troy Grant, also added his voice to calls for an independent inquiry.

In 1996, Father Lucas appeared before the Wood Royal Commission and claimed that the church had enforced strict rules to ensure such cases were reported to the police as a "matter of absolute policy".

His testimony came exactly six months after the church warned McAlinden, who was later acknowledged as a serial paedophile who potentially targeted hundreds of young girls, that "some people are threatening seriously to take this whole matter to the police".

The letter, penned by the former Maitland-Newcastle bishop Leo Clarke, urged McAlinden to co-operate with the defrocking "for the sake of souls and the good of the church".

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