Interview: Newcastle Herald journalist Joanne McCarthy

By Emma Alberici
ABC News
March 17, 2015

http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2015/s4199664.htm

Reporter Joanne McCarthy from the Newcastle Herald helped expose the Catholic Church's protection of paedophile priests. She speaks to Emma Alberici about the decision to charge Archbishop of Adelaide Philip Wilson with covering up the sexual abuse of children in the Hunter Valley.

EMMA ALBERICI, PRESENTER: The Catholic Church is facing serious allegations of covering up crimes.

The Archbishop of Adelaide, Philip Wilson, has taken leave after being charged with concealing child sexual abuse.

The charge relates to a long-dead notorious paedophile priest, Jim Fletcher, in the Maitland-Newcastle diocese in New South Wales.

Archbishop Wilson was a junior priest at the time when he worked with Fletcher. It's alleged Philip Wilson was told Fletcher had abused a child in 1976.

Archbishop Wilson isn't speaking to the media, but he's declared his innocence in a statement in which he reaffirms his "commitment to dealing proactively with the issue of child sexual abuse."

Back in 2010, Archbishop Wilson said he was unaware of any abuse allegations.

PHILIP WILSON, ARCHBISHOP, CATHOLIC DIOCESE OF ADELAIDE (Stateline SA, ABC TV, May 20 2010): Well, I think that it's all based on the claim that I knew that there was something happening. I did not know and therefore there was no way in which I had responsibility to do anything.

In fact, I've been very strongly committed to dealing with these things properly. And I have a really strong reputation for being thoroughly committed to our protocols and the care of children and have made that a big part of my ministry. So I think that that's something that stands as a, a mark of where I am and how I've always felt about this.

ALAN ATKINSON, REPORTER (Stateline SA, ABC TV, May 20 2010): And you have nothing to hide?

PHILIP WILSON: No. No. Nothing at all.

EMMA ALBERICI: Archbishop Wilson held senior positions on several Church bodies in Australia. He's currently the vice-president of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference and he belongs to the supervisory group linked to the Truth, Justice and Healing Council which deals with victims of child sexual abuse.

Archbishop Wilson today announced that he would be taking leave from those senior roles.

It was the reporting by Joanne McCarthy from the Newcastle Herald that helped expose the Catholic Church's protection of paedophile priests in the Maitland-Newcastle area.

She spoke to me a short time ago from the central coast of NSW.

Joanne McCarthy, it's good to have you back on the show.

JOANNE McCARTHY, REPORTER, NEWCASTLE HERALD: Hi, Emma.

EMMA ALBERICI: Can you give us a sense of the significance of today's charges laid against Archbishop Philip Wilson?

JOANNE McCARTHY: Well, he is the most senior Catholic clergyman in the world to have been charged with a conceal offence and not as a perpetrator but concealing the alleged crimes of another priest. And that is historic. It is significant because there's only been a handful of such charges in the world. And in many countries there isn't the legislation to even allow such a charge, so this is significant news.

EMMA ALBERICI: It's 20 years since the Newcastle Herald has been reporting about abuse by Catholic priests in the Newcastle-Maitland region. Back in 1995, what was the attitude of senior clergy to the revelations that were coming out?

JOANNE McCARTHY: Well, in public it was shock and distress and dismay and certainly the message to the public was, you know, that this was just one rotten apple. And cert- I mean, there was no suggestion, nor was anyone even putting that there were systemic issues or that anyone might have known about it.

You know, and we've subsequently found that that wasn't the case: that behind the scenes the diocese knew a lot about child sex offenders.

EMMA ALBERICI: Evidence before the Royal Commission has shown that children were telling adults what was happening to them. Why were clergy and others ignoring them?

JOANNE McCARTHY: Well, what the Royal Commission has shown to a distressing degree, I think, is that, you know, not only in the Catholic Church but in many, many institutions, many, many children over many decades reported that they had been sexually abused by adults.

And distressingly, many, many adults knew and failed to act, failed to report matters to authorities. I use the word "excuses" to explain. There was no big systemic cover-up, no conspiracy, no anything like that. There were many, many individuals who made decisions about what they would or wouldn't do.

In many cases, I think, it was simply because it wasn't in their job interest to report matters or that the status of the institution was more important than children, or that their own status was lined with the status of their institution and so it was better not to rock the boat, not to challenge that status.

It's... I don't think it was a co- I prefer to think that there were many, many, many individual failings where people had a moral obligation to act and found excuses not to.

And what we've seen at the Royal Commission is, distressingly, the consequences of those failures to act on the children involved, many of whom went to those institutions as adults expecting some kind of justice. And it is appalling to see the consequences of the failure of many people to act.

EMMA ALBERICI: Can you remind us of the scale of the issue in the Newcastle-Maitland area and give us a sense of how long Catholic priests and brothers were offending in that region?

JOANNE McCARTHY: Well, I can speak from first-hand experience. I've spoken to, you know, many people over the years. I know of offences occurring in the 1940s. I've certainly spoken to people where they were victims from the very early 1950s.

So we are talking about many decades ago. We're talking about many offenders: clergymen, priests, brothers, Marist brothers, Christian brothers, you name it. And that's within the Catholic Church.

Within the Hunter region there have also been significant allegations made against Anglican - ah, there have been convictions against Anglican offenders. There were investigations into people from other denominations as well. So it has occurred across the board.

I've spoken to people who have disclosed for the first time and they're in their 70s. I have sat with a man at a Towards Healing mediation between himself and, I think, it was the Marist brothers, because he had nobody else to sit with him. That man had reached the stage of his life where the consequences of the offences against him had left him completely isolated. So he reached out to a journalist to be his supporter.

Now, there are many cases like that. The public is learning more about that now. But they're there and they've been there for a long time.

EMMA ALBERICI: At what point did the Church hierarchy begin to appreciate the serious nature of these crimes?

JOANNE McCARTHY: Oh, when they were forced to: when it became public. I think the accountability has occurred because the silence has been broken.

The silence has been broken because many, many, many courageous people spoke, went to police, spoke to the media, agitated, spoke on behalf of each other, formed groups and networks and have said, "This is not right. These things happened to us. The truth is not on the record and we want that truth to be on the record. We don't accept the fact that there are institutions out there who are saying things that are just not right."

And again, the Royal Commission has provided a sample proof to a distressing degree of the extent of child sexual abuse across so many institutions.

EMMA ALBERICI: In the early days of your reporting, your Catholic diocese labelled you "the enemy" and said you were...

JOANNE McCARTHY: The enemy! (Laughs)

EMMA ALBERICI: ...and said you were "a sensationalist reporter."

JOANNE McCARTHY: Oh, yes. Yeah.

EMMA ALBERICI: What's your relationship like with them today?

JOANNE McCARTHY: OK, with the... with individuals within the diocese - and I'm going to be careful here - I have a very good working relationship with quite a number of them. With the current bishop: not so good.

The bishop - Bill Wright is his name - wrote a piece actually in the diocese magazine only a couple of months ago and it was about the Herald. And he wasn't happy with the Herald and me: that we weren't giving the Church a fair go, that we were being less than transparent. We weren't being even-handed. And then there was a list of my sins that were recorded and the Herald's sins and...

EMMA ALBERICI: What sorts of sins were they referring to?

JOANNE McCARTHY: It was interesting. Oh, look, there were lots and lots of things that he alleged. I disagree with them, so does the Herald, but we also support free speech.

And the part in the piece that I did get... I mean, I laughed when I read it. And I mean honestly: I laughed because it was like, "Oh, for heaven's sake." The part where I stopped laughing is when the Bishop referred to "the usual suspects" and the people that he was referring to as "usual suspects": I can name them because they've named themselves. They are either victims of child sexual abuse or, in one case, the mother of a victim - or two mothers, actually.

Now, Bishop Bill Wright is a member of the Church's Truth, Justice and Healing Council. I don't think it's at all appropriate for any senior member of the Catholic Church to be referring to victims and family members as "the usual suspects" because those people have the... what's the word? Believe that they should be able to speak on subjects.

As a journalist, that kind of criticism is water off a duck's back. But I do take exception, as did the people themselves, at being referred to as "the usual suspects". And I think while Catholic Church, senior Catholic Church members are speaking that way, we should always have a question mark over whether they're really getting the message about what this is about and whether we should...

My view is: you don't give them a millimetre while we have this defensive response. Until they really understand what the criticism is about and accept it, then I'm not sure that the Catholic Church is changing in a way that their words seem to be suggesting that they are.

EMMA ALBERICI: Joanne McCarthy, thank you very much for your time.

JOANNE McCARTHY: Thank you.