MP calls for investigation into cluster of paedophile priests at Holy Family School in Doveton, by Quentin Mcdermott And Peter Cronau, ABC News (August 20, 2014)

MP calls for investigation into cluster of paedophile priests at Holy Family School in Doveton

An investigation should be launched into a cluster of paedophile priests at the Holy Family School in Doveton, one of Victoria's poorest communities, according to one of the MPs who conducted an inquiry last year into the handling of child abuse by religious and other organisations.

Victorian Labor MP Frank McGuire made a statement to the Victorian Parliament today, following revelations in last week's ABC Four Corners program, In the Name of the Law.

The program revealed that Cardinal George Pell did not explain in oral evidence to last year's Victorian inquiry that the church had held a private hearing in 1997 at which the finding was made that local parish priest, Father Peter Searson, had been guilty of the sexual abuse of two children.

Father Searson was eventually removed from the Doveton parish and charged by police for an unrelated physical assault of a young boy attending the Holy Family School.

He was the last of four paedophile priests who had headed Doveton parish for an unbroken span of 25 years from 1972 to 1997.

The others were Father Thomas O'Keefe, Father Wilfred Baker and Father Victor Rubeo.

Their criminal acts over a quarter of a century damaged the lives of countless young children in the Doveton area and other parishes in which they worked.

I call on Cardinal Pell to explain to the royal commission whether Searson was convicted under the Melbourne Response, the system Pell established, but a conviction Pell failed to reveal during his testimony to the parliamentary inquiry.

Frank McGuire, Victorian Labor MP

The private hearing in 1997 was conducted by Peter O'Callaghan QC, the independent commissioner for the church's internal complaints process, the Melbourne Response.

Mr O'Callaghan was asked by George Pell, when he was Archbishop of Melbourne, to investigate the allegations of child abuse against Father Searson.

In the Victorian Parliament today, Mr McGuire recalled that "in answer to my question as deputy chair of the Victorian Parliamentary inquiry into child sexual abuse", Cardinal George Pell had declared that Father Peter Searson "has never been convicted of a sex crime".

"I call on Cardinal Pell to explain to the royal commission whether Searson was convicted under the Melbourne Response, the system Pell established, but a conviction Pell failed to reveal during his testimony to the parliamentary inquiry, " Mr McGuire said.

"When I pressed Cardinal Pell on whether he understood how victims regarded what happened as hear no evil, see no evil, say nothing evil about the church, Cardinal Pell responded: 'I think that is an objectionable suggestion, with no foundation in the truth. No conviction was recorded for Searson on sexual misbehaviour.'"

In an internal hearing held in 1997, and revealed by Four Corners last week, Mr O'Callaghan recorded a finding that "the parish priest [Searson] had been guilty of sexual abuse" of two girls "and consequently making recommendations to the Archbishop," then George Pell.

The references are contained in a document entitled "The Principal and the Parish Priest," marked private, confidential and without prejudice.

"This paedophile cluster blighted lives and destroyed the career of principal Graeme Sleeman, the whistleblower who exposed the cover up and has been shunned by Catholic Education since 1987 after revealing the truth," Mr McGuire told the Victorian Parliament.

"The royal commission's cross-examination of Cardinal Pell may be the last public opportunity to determine the truth concerning who protected children and who protected paedophiles."