How a Victim (with Police Help) Brought This Priest to Justice

Broken Rites
March 6, 2014

http://brokenrites.org.au/drupal/node/284

From 1964 to 1994, Father Richard Cattell was a Catholic priest in western Sydney parishes. A boy who was sexually abused by Cattell in 1973 eventually told police (twenty years later) about the abuse. This resulted in Cattell being jailed in 1994. This 1994 court case, researched by Broken Rites, demonstrates that church victims should report sexual crimes to the civil authorities (that is, police detectives), not to the offending organisation (the church).

Richard St John Cattell was ordained as a Catholic priest on 18 July 1964 for the Sydney diocese. He was in the same graduating group as another New South Wales priest, Vincent Kiss, of the Wagga Wagga diocese. (Vincent Kiss was eventually jailed.)

Broken Rites has ascertained that some of Cattell's early parishes in Sydney's west were: Concord West and Lakemba in the 1960s; and Liverpool and Windsor in the 1970s.

From 1982 to 1984, Cattell was listed (in the annual Australian Catholic Directory) as the parish priest in charge of the "Our Lady of the Rosary" parish in the outer-western Sydney suburb of St Marys, near Penrith. The "Our Lady of the Rosary Parish" includes the suburbs of Claremont Meadows, Colyton, Oxley Park, St Mary's and Werrington.

In the mid-1980s, parishes in Sydney's outer-west were separated from the Sydney diocese to form a new Diocese of Parramatta, and Cattell became a senior priest in the Parramatta diocese.

In the early 1990s, Cattell was the vicar-general of the Parramatta diocese, administering it on behalf of Bishop Bede Heather. It was then that a victim from the 1970s spoke to detectives from the New South Wales Police, resulting in the 1994 court case.

In the Penrith Local Court on 19 August 1994, Richard St John Cattell (then aged 54) pleaded guilty to five counts of indecent assault on a male. According to statements submitted to the court, the offences against this boy began occurring about 1973 (when the boy was aged 14 and Cattell had been in his early thirties).

The sentence process took place in Penrith District Court, beginning on 25 November 1994. The prosecution brief was compiled by Det. Sgt. Malcolm Hockenberg (of Penrith), working in association with Detective Sue Lightfoot of Penrith.

On 9 December 1994, Judge Saunders sentenced Richard Cattell to three years jail (with parole possible after serving two years behind bars). Cattell was placed in a jail specialising in sex-offenders.

The victim in the 1994 court case was not Richard Cattell's only victim. He was merely the one who took the opportunity of consulting a Detectives Office of the New South Wales police.

In recent years, Richard Cattell has lived on the NSW north coast, where he was a member of a bowling club.