Priest Charged with Sex Abuse and Failing to Report Alleged Abuse

By Dan Box
The Australian
August 30, 2012

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/priest-charged-with-sex-abuse-and-failing-to-report-alleged-abuse/story-e6frg6nf-1226461792148

A FORMER senior cleric in the NSW Hunter Valley has been charged with sexual abuse and failing to disclose alleged abuse by another priest.

It is thought to be the first time a member of the Australian Catholic clergy has been charged with failing to report the alleged child sex offences of another priest to police.

Father Thomas Brennan, 74, was charged this morning with two counts of misprision of a felony, or failing to disclose a serious crime, relating to alleged child sex offences at a school during the late 1970s.

Father Brennan, who was a school principal at the time of these alleged offences, was also charged with 10 counts of sexually assaulting a young boy in the early 1980s, when he was a parish priest.

He later served as vicar-general of the Maitland-Newcastle diocese, and was working as a parish priest in the Lake Macquarie area until as recently as last year.

He will appear in court in September.