Defrocking the Best Solution, Priest Tells Inquiry

By Catherine Armitage
Sydney Morning Herald
July 25, 2013

http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/defrocking-the-best-solution-priest-tells-inquiry-20130725-2qm2c.html

Brian Lucas outside the Newcastle Supreme Court building. Photo: Darren Pateman

There is “not much more you can do” to prevent children being abused by paedophile priests once you've removed the ministers from office, a Catholic Church priest has told a NSW government inquiry.

But Father Brian Lucas agreed his system of managing accused priests was a failure of risk management and did not comply with the church's protocols at the time.

In the five or six years from 1990 when his role was to deal with sexual abuse allegations against the church in NSW, some of those accused did admit their guilt to him, he said. But he did not pass the admissions on to police because he "never felt able to do that".

Father Lucas, who is also a lawyer with expertise in child protection, was being grilled at the inquiry into the alleged church cover-up of paedophile priest activity in the Hunter Valley.

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His insistence that defrocking paedophile priests was the best approach in the early 1990s is under challenge from counsel assisting the inquiry Julia Lonergan, SC. Also under challenge is the credibility of his assertion of a total absence of memory about his dealings with paedophile priest Father McAlinden.

Father Lucas has given evidence that he did not take notes of his conversations with accused priests even though church protocol then called for documentation. He insists his highest priority was always the safety of children but priests would not have spoken to him if he had taken notes. His objective was to get the alleged perpetrators to resign from the priesthood.

He has given evidence that he dealt with about 35 accused priests and some had resigned.

Evidence has been given to the inquiry that Denis McAlinden, who had been the subject of allegations to the church from the 1950s, admitted his guilt in an interview with Father Lucas in 1993 and was stripped of his priestly responsibilities.

McAlinden then moved to the Philippines and worked as a priest in a school of 7000 children from kindergarten upwards.

Father Lucas conceded McAlinden might have evaded justice. When Ms Lonergan suggested Father Lucas's approach had failed, he said that was the case only if McAlinden had committed a crime in the Philippines, “and I have not seen any evidence" that he did.

“It was a failure as to risk, I would certainly agree," he said.