A bishop has a memory lapse about the alleged crimes of an ex-priest

Broken Rites
July 29, 2015

http://brokenrites.org.au/drupal/node/344

A retired Australian Catholic bishop, Most Reverend Ronald Mulkearns, has been forced to appear in court to answer questions about a former priest, Robert Claffey (now aged 70), who is charged with multiple incidents of indecent assault against seven children. In court on 29 July 2015, Bishop Mulkearns was forced to admit that, yes, he had known about Father Claffey's "misbehaviour" but claimed that he could not remember the details.

Bishop Mulkearns (born in 1930) was the head of the Catholic Church throughout the western half of the state of Victoria (with his cathedral in the city of Ballarat), from 1971 to 1997. Father Robert Claffey worked in west Victorian parishes under Bishop Mulkearns in the 1970s and 1980s. Claffey is charged with having committed indecent assaults at various locations in western Victoria, including Ballarat, Warrnambool, Portland and Apollo Bay, between 1970 and 1992.

During a preliminary procedure in the Geelong Magistrates Court on 12 December 2014, the court was told that one of the alleged assaults involved Father Claffey going to a boy’s house and indecently assaulting him during the 1980s. Detective Sergeant Tim Kennedy, from the Sano Taskforce in the Victoria Police, told the court that the boy allegedly reported the assault to his father, who then allegedly reported it to Bishop Mulkearns. Claffey was then moved from his parish at Wendouree (in Ballarat) to another parish [in a different part of the diocese], Sergeant Kennedy said.

The court was told that ex-Bishop Mulkearns had initially agreed to give a statement to police in the investigation against ex-priest Claffey, but his lawyers later told police that Mulkearns did not wish to give evidence, because his health was not good enough. Ex-Bishop Mulkearns then failed to attend a medical assessment that was organised to determine whether he was indeed too ill to take the witness stand, the court was told.

Magistrate Ron Saines said he was satisfied that ex-bishop Mulkearns had refused to provide a statement. He granted the prosecution’s application to have him undergo compulsory questioning in court. After the December 2014 hearing, the case was adjourned until 2015.

The church authorities hired a Queen's Counsel to advise Mulkearns about how to handle his forthcoming appearance in court. When ex-Bishop Mulkearns appeared in the Geelong Magistrates Court on 29 July 2015, he claimed a memory loss.

The Geelong court has ordered Claffey to stand trial.The Claffey case will proceed now to the next step in the judicial process, which will be a hearing before a judge in a higher court, the Victorian County Court. Meanwhile, Robert Claffey is on bail.

Father Bob Claffey belonged to the Ballarat diocese, which covers the whole of western Victoria. He ministered in the 1970s at Terang (St Thomas's parish), Warrnambool (St Joseph's) and Apollo Bay (Our Lady Star of the Sea parish). During the 1980s, he was in charge of the Wendouree parish (Our Lady Help of Christians), situated in the city of Ballarat, with a junior priest as his assistant. However, Father Claffey was listed in the 1990 Australian Catholic directory as being "on leave" (this directory is a listing of all the current priests in Australia, at the time of publication).

In 1991-2 (according to the annual directory) Father Claffey was sent as an assistant priest to Portland (All Saints parish). About August 1992, when he was aged about 49, Claffey was no longer at the Portland parish. He was listed in the annual Australian directory in 1994 as being "on leave". Eventually he ceased being included in the list of Australian priests in the annual directory.

For a previous court case involving Father Robert Claffey (in 1998), click HERE.

Bishop Ronald Mulkeams, originally from Melbourne, was appointed as co-adjutor Bishop of Ballarat on 5 September 1968 (with right of succession) and acted as the parish priest of St Alipius's in East Ballarat, living in the presbytery adjoining the St Alipius church and the parish primary school. When Ballarat's Bishop James O'Collins retired on 1 May 1971, Mulkeams moved to the Cathedral parish and to the Bishop's residence.

From 1 May 1971, Bishop Mulkeams was fully responsible for all clergy appointments and transfers in the Ballarat diocese, including the paedophile Monsignor John Day and Father Gerald Ridsdale and various other paedophile priests. Some time after May 1971, Ridsdale was transferred from Warmambool (where he was in trouble for sexually assaulting boys) to St Alipius's, where he lived as an assistant priest in the presbytery vacated by Mulkeams. In 1973, Ridsdale was joined by another assistant priest, Father George Pell.

Ridsdale and Pell shared the house for a year or so until Ridsdale was shunted on to other towns. Pell stayed at St Alipius's till the late 1970s.

The covering-up of clergy-abuse in the Ballarat Catholic diocese has been investigated in a public hearing of Australia's national Royal Commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse. The Commission is continuing its investigation of the Ballarat Catholic diocese. The Commission wants ex-bishop Mulkearns to appear at a future session of the Commission to answer questions.