Senior Church Figure Advised Clergy Not to Take Notes of Interviews with Accused Priests

By Blayney Chronicle
Catherine Armitage
July 24, 2013

http://www.blayneychronicle.com.au/story/1659291/senior-church-figure-advised-clergy-not-to-take-notes-of-interviews-with-accused-priests/?cs=12

One of the Australian Catholic Church's most prominent and senior figures has admitted he advised other clergy it was a good idea not to take notes of interviews with priests accused of sexual abuse so they couldn't be successfully used in legal action.

Father Brian Lucas, a frequent media spokesman for the archdiocese of Sydney and general secretary of the Australian Catholic Bishops' Conference said he had dealt with about 35 accused priests around NSW from 1990 to 1995 when he was part of a team whose job was to confront them and persuade them out of the ministry.

He gave evidence to the NSW government inquiry into alleged police and church cover-ups of sexual abuse by priests in the Hunter Valley that he had persuaded more than 10 of them to leave the ministry.

He said if he had taken notes fairness would have required that he check them with the accused for accuracy. Asked whether he had ever done that he said no.

He said his main priority was to remove priests from situations where they had access to children, and taking formal notes could be "unproductive" and stop them from speaking to him. "The particularities in dealing with these priests were that one had to, in a sense, seduce them into agreeing to resign," he said.

"Is the real position as to why you didn't want to take any note that you didn't want it to have to be exposed in any subsequent legal process?" asked counsel assisting the inquiry, Julia Lonergan, SC.

"I think that would be a reasonable comment," he replied.

She asked whether he had published views for the benefit of other clergy to the effect that it was a good idea not to take notes "so that a subsequent legal process that would compel production of them cannot be successful?"

“In some instances that would be accurate” Father Lucas responded.

He said it was a “serious and well understood dilemma” within church legal circles that clergy risked being charged with the crime of misprision of a felony, or concealing a serious offence, if they did not go to police with victims' complaints when victims did not want them to.

He said the church's reputation or the risk of scandal was “irrelevant” to him in a situation where he had to choose between risking criminal liability for misprision of a felony and betraying a victim's wishes. He would choose to respect the victim's wishes, he said.

Father Lucas' evidence continues at the inquiry.