"Police Cover-up of Sex Abuse"

By Neil Keene
The Australian
May 7, 2013

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/police-cover-up-of-sex-abuse/story-e6frg6n6-1226636332510

A "CATHOLIC mafia" of senior officers within the NSW Police Force hampered investigations into child sex abuse within the Church, an inquiry was told yesterday.

A Special Commission of Inquiry heard from police whistleblower Peter Fox about conversations he had with another officer in 2010 about the so-called mafia and its role in covering up entrenched paedophilia within the Maitland-Newcastle diocese.

Detective Chief Inspector Fox said he and former officer Troy Grant - now a National Party MP in Dubbo - spoke about senior police "aligned to the Catholic Church" interfering with investigations into the clergy.

Those police allegedly sent Mr Grant on trips away and snowed him under with other investigations to ensure he would have no time to interview alleged victims or conduct a thorough investigation.

"He was highly critical of senior police in Newcastle," Insp Fox, speaking about his conversation with Mr Grant, told the commission yesterday.

Despite more than eight years investigating claims of sexual abuse within the Church, Insp Fox was ordered off the case suddenly in December 2010 at a meeting attended by some of the Hunter Region's most senior police.

The commission heard that, shortly before that order was given, two senior officers including then-Newcastle local area commander Supt Charles Haggett, scoured Insp Fox's locked office "from top to bottom" while he was on leave, trying without success to find anything that related to his investigations.

"In all my years of policing, I've never heard of police getting into another officer's office and turning it upside down," Insp Fox said.

The commission of inquiry was announced last November to find out why Insp Fox was told to stop his investigations and whether senior Catholic clergy deliberately hampered police efforts to bring two Catholic priest paedophiles - Fathers Dennis McAlinden and Jim Fletcher - to justice.

The first two weeks of hearings will look at the first point, while a second round of hearings starting next month will delve into the second.

The commission heard Insp Fox's investigations began in 2002 when he interviewed one of Fletcher's victims.

Subsequent investigations uncovered what he believed to be widespread collusion among "a number of clergy" to cover up the offences, and to warn Fletcher that police were on his tail. Fletcher, now deceased, was convicted and sentenced in 2004. The commission, before Commissioner Margaret Cunneen SC, is separate to the federal government's royal commission into institutionalised child sex abuse, which is already under way.

Counsel assisting, Julia Lonergan, SC, said the commission had completed more than 100 interviews and private hearings and collected thousands of pages of documents from the Church and police.

She asked why Insp Fox was told to stop investigating, whether his investigations were shelved and whether allegations of cover-ups by the Church were set aside because they were "too difficult". "They are very important questions," she said.

Det Insp Fox is expected to continue his evidence today.