Operation Protea Is a Welcome Move by the Nsw Police Watchdog

By Suzanne Smith
ABC News
October 3, 2014

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-10-03/operation-protea-is-a-welcome-move-by-the-nsw-police-watchdog/5789850

The announcement today that the Police Integrity Commission (PIC) in NSW will hold a public hearing as part of Operation Protea – an investigation into the relationship and agreements between police and the Catholic Church - is a welcome move.

There should be absolute clarity as to whether these arrangements were appropriate or could be in contravention of section 316 of the NSW Crimes Act – which refers to concealment of crimes.

If there was no complicity between the organisations, that will be a welcome relief.

What needs to be cleared up is whether the Catholic Church, through tricky legal thinking, set up these arrangements so they could not be prosecuted under new mandatory reporting laws in NSW.

The Catholic Church argues it acted in good faith, and wanted these arrangement to ensure there was no risk to children in their care.

That argument needs to be tested, given what we know now about the extent of clerical abuse cover up across the country.

It may be found to be correct, but the public has a right to know these issues are thoroughly investigated.

To understand, we have to go back to 1996. It was the heady days of the Wood Royal Commission. The Commission investigated police corruption in NSW.

Out of it came new mandatory reporting laws in NSW.

For the first time, the Catholic Church was legally obliged to report directly to police about issues of child sexual assault.

Freedom of Information (FOI) documents unearthed by the ABC and by NSW Greens MLC David Shoebridge revealed senior officials of the Catholic Church were actively pursuing arrangements with police

At the heart of this investigation is an arrangement that occurred between 1998 and 2005. NSW police agreed to a church request to second a senior serving police officer on to an internal body within the church known as the Professional Standards Resource Group.

The officer was there to give advice about risks and potential concerns within the church's operations. Members of this group included very senior clergy of the Catholic Church.

The FOI investigation also revealed the Church leaders thought they had struck a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with police about what information would be handed over, a sharing of intelligence.

NSW Police deny this MOU was ever in place. They say it was never signed off on and only in draft form. This needs to be clarified. Did the Catholic Church and the NSW Police have an MOU about how intelligence on child sexual abuse matters would be shared?

Did it govern the behaviour of a serving police officer on the internal Catholic Church body?

There is a deep conflict of interest: Shoebridge

The central focus of concern is whether a serving officer, whose first obligation is to solve crime and act on reports of potential crimes, should have been involved in the internal processes of the Catholic Church.

But of equal concern is another fact revealed through the FOI process; the Catholic Church ordered all the minutes of the meetings of the Professional Standards Resource Group to be shredded or returned to the Church – and NOT be retained by police.

Mr Shoebridge says the PIC must get to the bottom of why the NSW Police complied with this directive.

"The first concern was a NSW police officer being involved in an internal church committee. But when the documents came out through FOI we were told there was a protocol in place that either all the information was returned by the police officer or anything that wasn't retained by the police was shredded.

"Now how on earth did that come to be? It is an absolutely extraordinary set of circumstances and a deep conflict of interest on the part of the police and presumably why the Police Integrity Commission is taking such a careful view of it," Mr Shoebridge said.

He says the public needs to have absolute confidence in state institutions like the police that there is no inappropriate influence from private organisations.

"There is a fundamental problem when you effectively co-opt the police into your own internal inquiries, and of course the church has an obligation under the criminal law here in NSW to report to police instances of child abuse that would amount to an indictable crime," he said.

"Almost certainly every one of the alleged allegations would have satisfied that obligation to have to report, and you can only speculate that the church may well have set up this institution and this arrangement with the police seeking to satisfy their reporting obligations under the Crimes Act and therefore avoid prosecution for failing to report to the police."

The Catholic Church's Truth Justice and Healing Council says it welcomes the PIC's inquiry.

The council says any investigation that can provide greater clarity around the relationship between police and the Catholic Church in relation to child sexual abuse is welcome and will be fully cooperated with.

We can all agree with that.