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Archbishop of Adelaide charged over concealing children's sex abuse
By Helen Davidson
The archbishop of Adelaide has been charged by police over his alleged concealment of the sexual abuse of children by a priest in the 1970s. On Tuesday New South Wales police charged Philip Wilson, 64, of concealing a serious offence, and issued a court attendance notice. It is alleged Wilson covered up knowledge of alleged abuse by priest Jim Fletcher in the 70s, the Australian reported. The report said Wilson is believed to be the highest-ranking Catholic official in the world to face criminal charges of this type. He faces up to two years’ jail. Wilson, who is the vice president of the Australian Catholic bishops conference, and Fletcher, who died in 2006, were both employed in the Maitland diocese at the time of the abuse. In 2004 Fletcher was jailed over the rape of a young boy between 1989 and 1991. He died while serving his sentence. In a statement released on Tuesday afternoon Wilson said he was disappointed the police had decided to file a charge. “The suggestion appears to be that I failed to bring to the attention of police a conversation I am alleged to have had in 1976, when I was a junior priest, that a now deceased priest had abused a child,” he said. “From the time this was first brought to my attention last year, I have completely denied the allegation. I intend to vigorously defend my innocence through the judicial system.” WIlson also reaffirmed his commitment “to dealing proactively with the issue of child sexual abuse and the implementation of best-practice child protection measures which I have pioneered since becoming a bishop,” adding that his efforts have been “widely acknowledged”. The NSW special commission of inquiry, which investigated the handling of abuse allegations in the region, identified at least five known victims of Fletcher, “each of whom was as a child sexually abused by him over a number of months, and often years”. It described Fletcher as having an “extensive history” of the abuse of children, in particular altar boys, dating back to the 70s. The charges laid come from investigations by the dedicated strike force Lantle, which has operated since 2010 specifically “to investigate allegations of concealment of serious offences related to child abuse by clergy formerly and currently attached to the Maitland-Newcastle diocese of the Catholic church”, NSW police said. In 2012 the Lantle brief of evidence was forwarded to the state’s director of public prosecutions seeking advice on its evidence and its adequacy to prosecute members of the Catholic church over concealment of child sexual assault. In May 2014 the special commission found there was “sufficient evidence warranting the prosecution of a senior church official in connection with the concealment of child sexual abuse relating to Fletcher”. The inquiry, headed up by the former NSW crown prosecutor Margaret Cunneen, released three of its four report volumes to the public. The fourth related to Fletcher and was kept confidential “in order to protect potential future criminal proceedings” and did not name the “senior church official”. Wilson is due to appear in Newcastle local court on Thursday, 30 April.
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