Victims suffered as police also faltered, by Joanne Mccarthy, Newcastle Herald (June 2, 2014)

I HAVE some questions for NSW Police Commissioner Andrew Scipione after the release of the NSW Special Commission of Inquiry final report.

They go to the heart of why a journalist ended up campaigning for a royal commission in 2012, and why police are one of the "existing institutions" that have failed the victims of child sexual abuse in churches and other institutions.

1. If the Newcastle woman known to the inquiry as AL, a victim of paedophile priest Denis McAlinden, had gone on her own to police and asked them to investigate whether senior clergy had concealed McAlinden's crimes for decades based on church documents she held, what are the chances it would have happened?

2. Is the commissioner prepared to concede AL's chances would have been zero, and police eventually investigated because it was a journalist, and not a victim of a paedophile priest, who gave them the documents and made it clear she was not going away?

3. On what basis was a senior Hunter police officer describing the "availability" of the Catholic Church's Towards Healing process as "an alternate to the criminal process" in July 2010, in his internal police report assessing whether police should investigate the McAlinden cover-up?

4. Is the commissioner comfortable that by as late as 2010, and despite victims' very public condemnation of Towards Healing over a number of years, its "availability" was raised by that senior Hunter police officer as a reason not to investigate whether the church covered up the crimes of McAlinden? And can I remind the commissioner that Denis McAlinden preyed, primarily, on little girls aged between four and 12 over four decades, has victims in at least three countries, and died in 2005 with his "good name" protected by the Catholic Church.

5. On what was another senior Hunter police officer relying, in April 2010, to make the statement that Towards Healing was "a comprehensive policy and procedure for dealing with abuse allegations", in another internal document relating to the McAlinden cover-up complaint?

6. Why did the NSW sex crimes squad, as late as November 2012, write to the Newcastle Herald that the Sydney archdiocese had just revised Towards Healing "to focus on notifying police", as if that was a cause for celebration? Can I also note that unsolicited promo for Towards Healing was not the subject I had originally raised.

7. Has the NSW Police Force at any time in the past 16 years, if at all, assessed whether the Catholic Church's Towards Healing process is "an alternate to the criminal process" for victims of the church's child sex offenders, or "a comprehensive policy and procedure for dealing with abuse allegations"? If not, why not?

8. Has the NSW Police Force consulted with victims' groups in that time, to assess whether those statements are true from the victims' point of view?

During the NSW Special Commission of Inquiry last year, the NSW Police Force was happy to describe the final investigation into the Catholic Church's knowledge of McAlinden's offences in glowing terms.

It was "an amazing brief" of evidence, NSW sex crimes squad Detective Inspector Paul Jacob told the inquiry on May 16 last year.

"It's a brief of investigation which I would hold up against any other that I've seen of this type of nature" that he planned to use as "an example" of best practice, he said.

But victims, their families and victims' groups are entitled to answers on these questions.

The fact is that police alone cannot, and never could, deliver justice to the victims of historic child sexual abuse, particularly involving clergy, and police working in the field would be the first to say so.

Many decades can elapse between the offences and the reporting of those offences to police.

In that time perpetrators can die. Evidence disappears. Memories fade or are distorted.

By 2010, after four years of reporting on child sex offenders in the Hunter Region, and mounting evidence that churches supported them, I took the McAlinden documents to the NSW Police with AL's consent.

That was after legal advice there were strong grounds for police to investigate senior Australian Catholic clergy's knowledge of McAlinden's offences.

In world terms there has only been a handful of Catholic clergy charged for non-reporting or concealing offences of the child sex crimes of other priests.

In 2013 the late Toronto priest Tom Brennan was the first Australian priest to be charged with concealing the child sex crimes of another priest, John Denham, but he died before the matter could be determined.

By 2012, after six years of reporting on child sexual abuse within churches in the Hunter, and after contact with hundreds of victims, their families and victims' groups, I was firmly of the view that simply prosecuting individuals was not nearly enough - whether the perpetrators or those who had knowledge of their crimes.

Which is why I did not agree with Barry O'Farrell's reasoning, in early September 2012, against supporting a royal commission.

He said he had discussed a royal commission with Commissioner Scipione and believed one should not go ahead while police investigations in the Hunter continued.

"I intend to do nothing that gets in the way of police bringing to justice those who prey upon children," Mr O'Farrell said.

The child sexual abuse crisis has always been about the abuse of power - by child sex offender clergy against children, by the churches that supported and protected the abusers, and again when those children became adults and expected the truth from the churches.

Individuals should be prosecuted for committing crimes, but the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse is delivering the justice that victims, and the community, demanded in 2012 when they called for a royal commission.

In March Cardinal George Pell told the royal commission what victims of the Catholic Church's child sex offenders have argued for a long time - Towards Healing failed to meet the Church's moral responsibility towards victims, and was not a comprehensive policy and procedure for dealing with abuse.

We're learning the truth about the systemic institutional failures which contributed to a national tragedy. The NSW Police Force is one of those institutions.