All Eyes on Aust's Beef with the Bishop

Daily Mail
March 20, 2015

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/aap/article-3003542/All-eyes-Austs-beef-bishop.html

There was a time when the Catholic Church knew exactly what to do when one of its clergy molested a child.

"A cleric or monk who sexually molests youths or boys is to be publicly whipped, his head shaved, spat upon, and kept in prison for six months in chains on a diet of bread and water," wrote Basil the Great, the Greek bishop of Caesarea in the 4th century.

He also recommended the offender be watched and not let anywhere near young people once released.

Basil's solution is extreme by today's standards, but it leaves you asking how, 1600 years later, secrecy and cover-up became the Catholic Church's modus operandi with errant clergy.

So overarching is the church's operating style that it's worldwide news when a Catholic archbishop in Australia - Philip Wilson of Adelaide - is charged with concealing the crime of child sex abuse.

NSW Police allege Wilson knew about it, yet failed to report priest Jim Fletcher for abusing boys in the 1970s, when both were working and sharing a house in the Maitland Diocese, near Newcastle.

Fletcher died in prison in 2006 after being convicted in the late 1990s of molesting a 13-year-old altar boy. His crimes stretched back to the 1970s.

Wilson has taken leave to defend his innocence and will appear in Newcastle Local Court on April 30.

The charge against the archbishop followed a five-year investigation by Strike Force Lantle into alleged cover-ups of child abuse by Catholic clergy in Maitland.

One charge against one man after five years seems minuscule in light of the evidence delivered at the NSW Special Commission of Inquiry into Maitland-Newcastle and since then, at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sex Abuse.

Both inquiries delivered regular headlines about predatory priests being encouraged to resign or being moved from parish to parish.

In Ireland, the US and elsewhere, the same story is told.

The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child in February 2014 demanded the Holy See hand over archives so that culpable clergy, as well as those who concealed their crimes, could be brought to justice.

There is no realistic hope this will ever happen, so the eyes of the world are on Australia.

In the 1990s, Father Brian Lucas, general secretary of the Australian Catholic Bishops' Conference, had the job of interviewing and managing priests alleged to have sexually abused children.

He never took notes during those interviews and he never reported directly to police.

The senior cleric deftly defended his approach at the NSW inquiry in 2013 and again last June at a royal commission inquiry into the Catholic Marist Brothers.

His defence did not impress NSW inquiry commissioner Margaret Cunneen.

In her final report she found Lucas, a trained lawyer, avoided the creation of documentary records to keep hidden child sex abuse by clergy.

A year later Lucas told the royal commission that was never his intent, although he accepted it might have been a consequence of note-free meetings.

His job was to persuade the accused priest to admit his crime and taking notes would have hindered that, he said.

In Ireland, a commission found the structure and rules of the Catholic Church facilitated the cover up of sexual abuse by clergy.

Cardinal George Pell has infamously given Australians insight into church structure.

Just last year he described it like a trucking company whose leadership would not be held responsible if drivers sexually assault a passenger.

Retired Sydney lawyer Kieran Tapsall has provided insight into the rules.

In his book Potiphar's Wife: the Vatican's Secret and Child Sexual Abuse, Tapsall, who trained as a priest and studied church law, says for most of its 2000-year existence the Catholic Church fired priests who molested minors and handed them over to civil authorities.

He writes about Basil the Great as an example of an earlier approach.

Potiphar's Wife caused a stir when it was published last year just as the royal commission tried to come to grips with convoluted church responses.

Tapsall wrote that the secrecy goes back to a 1922 directive by Pope Pius XI.

The directive with the catchy Latin title, crimen sollicitationis, set a new standard for the Catholic Church's handling of child sex abuse allegations.

It imposed the secret of the Holy Office on all information the church gathered for internal trials of alleged child molesters. Not adhering to the secrecy rule could mean excommunication.

The directive was repealed in 1983, but its effects and the secrecy enshrined in other canons live on.

These rules have led to extraordinary behaviours including church attempts to "cure" its pedophiles.

In the Marist inquiry it was revealed that Brother Gregory Sutton, who was extradited from the US to face 67 counts of child sexual abuse, had been urgently sent to Canada for therapy.

The head of the Catholic Marist Brothers at the time, Brother Alexis Turton, was repeatedly forced to deny Sutton was sent abroad to foil a police investigation.

There will be some nervous people in Australia awaiting the outcome of the Wilson case.

And as Dr Andrew Morrison QC, the Australian Lawyers Alliance spokesman on this issue says: This is not just a problem in the Catholic Church.

There are people out there in other churches, schools and institutions who should be very concerned, he says.

CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE NUMBERS:

* The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has referred 510 matters to authorities, including police.

* Police are investigating 142 alleged crimes.

* Seven investigations have resulted in charges to date.

* There is no breakdown on the number of referrals, if any, for concealment of child sexual abuse

* There are many other matters awaiting possible investigation, the commission says.