An Inconvenient Truth of Church and Courts Protecting Perverts

By Miranda Devine
The Telegraph
July 3, 2013

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/opinion/an-inconvenient-truth-of-church-and-courts-protecting-perverts/story-fni0cwl5-1226673368536

A DAUGHTER repeatedly violently raped by her own father from the age of nine summons the courage to tell police what he did to her. He is let off by a NSW judge with a good behaviour bond as long as he attends a treatment program for incestuous paedophiles.

A boy born to a surrogate mother in Russia and bought for $8000 by the sperm donor and his Australian partner for their sexual gratification is subjected to vile abuse for six years from infancy.

A little boy constantly raped by the late serial paedophile priest Dennis McAlinden between the ages of five and nine tells his parish priest in Singleton about the rapes during his first confession.

He is given penance "apparently for his sin in being abused by that priest," says Julia Lonergan, SC, counsel assisting the NSW commission into child sexual abuse in the Hunter Valley's Catholic Church.

These are three stories of paedophile atrocities which appeared in this newspaper this week. There are countless others which haven't.

While the community regards paedophilia as the most heinous crime, it seems authorities do not, whether church leaders who allowed paedophiles free rein, or courts which fail to jail them.

Solicitor Greg Walsh was drafted in late by supporters of the 19-year-old woman referred to earlier, to try to force an appeal of her father's lenient sentence.

"She expected justice. She was not listened to," he said yesterday.

He has written letters of complaint to the NSW Attorney-General Greg Smith and the Director of Public Prosecutions Lloyd Babb.

"Someone has dropped the ball," he says.

"She's the most delightful girl. She has suffered the worst kind of breach of trust and the psychological impact is horrendous.

"Now it's all been made worse because the justice system let her down.

"She's had a number of psychiatric admissions to hospital because of this terrible abuse and but for the dedicated support of psychiatrists, psychologists and sexual assault workers she wouldn't be on this planet."

Walsh believes the court gave "undue weight to the views of the mother that restoration should occur in the family and that the offender should not go to jail".

"Restoration" means keeping the family together. But the young woman wants nothing to do with her father - or her mother who was allegedly present in the marital bed during some abuse, although she claimed to

be unaware.

The mother is aware now

of what her husband did to their little girl because he pleaded guilty. Yet still she supports him.

"The paramount interests were those of this young victim, not the mother," Walsh said.

The father is required to have treatment at Cedar Cottage, run by the Department of Health, which uses "evocative therapy, cognitive behaviour therapy and psycho-education that draws on the belief that 'abusive behaviour is most likely to cease if the perpetrator accepts full responsibility for his actions'."

Well it's a bit late now. His children are grown.

The damage to his daughter is done, and now justice needs to be done.

At least the Attorney-General axed Cedar Cottage last September.

"The community rightly expects those who engage in child sex assault to receive a custodial sentence," he wrote in a letter to Walsh last week. The DPP is yet to respond.

The problem is that this paedophile father was originally sentenced before September. But he was sentenced again on April 4 this year on additional related charges to which he pleaded guilty. That was the opportunity to give him serious jail time.

Serious jail time is what was delivered to American-Australian Mark Newton, 42, in a court in Indiana, USA.

He was sentenced to 40 years for the sexual abuse of the now eight-year-old boy he and his partner Peter Truong adopted from a Russian surrogate mother. (Truong has pleaded guilty and is awaiting sentencing in New Zealand.)

They were accused of making hardcore child porn with the little blonde boy for an international paedophile ring, The Boy Lovers network.

The boy, who had an Australian accent at age five, was brainwashed into believing the abuse was normal.

In a story for ABC radio in Cairns two years ago titled "Two dads are better than one putting gender on the agenda", the paedophiles and the boy are interviewed about their idyllic family life.

The story was taken offline yesterday but it was chilling.

The men complain about the obstacles which "homophobic" authorities put in their path, such as the two-year wait for a visa to bring the baby to Australia.

When they arrived, "we were held up for a couple of hours," by Customs, said Truong. "If one of us had been a woman we wouldn't have had the same suspicions or concerns."

Police were sent to their Cairns home to investigate. "They wanted to see the situation was right, that we had bottle sterilisers ... everything set up properly for raising a child," said Truong. "They didn't really tell us what their concerns were."

The reporter asked: "Do you think there was a suspicion, you are two guys, , there must be a paedophilic thing going on here?"

Newton answers, coolly: "Absolutely, absolutely, I am sure that was completely the case."

It was a missed opportunity to rescue the child.

In 2011, after police raided their home over connections to a child porn ring, the men complained to the media again of discrimination.

The boy is now reportedly in the care of extended family.

The normal person recoils in horror from these stories.

We don't want to hear. We feel disempowered.

The abuse involves the exploitation of trust, between an innocent child and a trusted adult. It cannot be exposed unless the child gives evidence or is identified in pornography.

This happens rarely. Exposure, if it comes, is usually not for years, and often, as in the case of Father McAlinden, when the monster is dead

As one child sexual abuse investigator told me yesterday, under-resourced NSW police are lucky if they charge 10 per cent of offenders. Of those very few go to jail. Only three of 238 men convicted of raping a child under 10 in the past decade were jailed for even the minimum term. This flies in the face of community expectations. It is why we cannot turn away.