The church gave this paedophile priest a new parish, plus more victims

Broken Rites
September 13, 2015

http://www.brokenrites.org.au/drupal/node/242

A boy complained about being sexually abused by a Catholic priest, but the church merely transferred the priest to a new parish, thus giving him access to more children, a Sydney court has been told. Many years later, one of the victims contacted Broken Rites, which advised him to speak to detectives. Police then charged the priest, Father Robert Flaherty, who has recently pleaded guilty regarding his assaults on two boys, committed in Sydney parishes between 1971 and 1981. On 7 September 2015, a jury found Flaherty guilty of assaulting another boy (in 1977). Father Flaherty (now retired, aged 72) will be sentenced soon.

In the early 1970s, according to court documents, one of Flaherty's victims complained to Bishop Edward Kelly, who was an assistant to Sydney archbishop, Cardinal Norman Gilroy. But Father Flaherty was kept in the priesthood for the next 40 years, and, likewise, Bishop Kelly continued his own career.

Robert Francis Flaherty (born 14 June 1943) is a priest in the Sydney archdiocese. After eventually retiring from being in charge of parishes (aged in his mid-sixties), he continued living in a presbytery, working as a hospital chaplain, until the police interviewed him in 2013 (40 years after the first alleged offence).

Broken Rites first heard of Father Robert Flaherty in 2012, in a phone call from one of Flaherty's victims. Broken Rites gave this victim the contact details for a Detectives Office of the New South Wales Police in western Sydney. In the police files, the detectives found a previous complaint from another boy in one of Flaherty's other parishes. They also found another victim from another parish.

These three boys, aged between 11 and 15, did not know each other. They lived in parishes where Father Flaherty worked, in three suburbs (St Mary's, Richmond and Blacktown — all to the west of Sydney).

These were not necessarily Father Flaherty's only victims. They are merely the three who were interviewed by the detectives. The detectives then interviewed Flaherty.

In a Local Court in 2013, police charged Flaherty regarding these three complainants.

The offences occurred in western Sydney or during visits to Father Flaherty's holiday house at Mollymook, 220 miles from Sydney on the New South Wales south coast, near Ulladulla.

The first of these three victims encountered Flaherty in 1971 in "Our Lady of the Rosary" parish in the suburb called St Mary's, where Flaherty was an assistant priest (helping the Parish Priest). Flaherty was driving the boy home in his VW Kombi van after a youth group when he stopped the vehicle and committed the offence. This boy was assaulted, also, on Flaherty's bed in the parish residence, the presbytery.

Another victim (from St Monica's parish in Richmond, western Sydney) was assaulted at the Mollymook holiday house in 1981. He was woken in the night when Flaherty tried to grope him sexually. Chronologically (according to the year of the offence), this was the third victim in the court proceedings. This victim told his wife in 1996 and then complained to police but there was insufficient evidence for the police to proceed with a prosecution at this time.

These two complainants, from 1971 and 1981, have been labelled as "Boy A" and "Boy B".

Meanwhile, in 1977 (between Boy A and Boy B), there was another boy (Broken Rites will refer to him as "Dwayne", not his real name) who encountered Flaherty at St Patrick's parish in Blacktown where Flaherty was an assistant priest. This boy was taken to Flaherty's holiday house at Mollymook, where the abuse occurred. The offences against this boy were more serious than the offences on the two other boys. Therefore, when this victim contacted the police in 2012, his complaint prompted the police to proceed with a prosecution relating to all three victims.

In 2013, preliminary proceedings were held by a magistrate in a Local Court, where the charges were all filed. Next, the matter proceeded to a judge in Sydney's Parramatta District Court:-

• In 2014, in the Parramatta District Court, Flaherty pleaded guilty regarding Boy A and Boy B (one incident per boy). He is awaiting sentence regarding these two victims.
• Flaherty pleaded not guilty to two charges ("indecent assault of a male") regarding the 1977 victim ("Dwayne"). On 7 September 2015, after a trial conducted by Judge R. Cogswello, a jury returned a verdict of "Guilty" on these two charges regarding "Dwayne" (the official number of this court case was 2013/00201461).

Flaherty is scheduled for a further mention in court on 23 September 2015, when the court will fix a subsequent date for the sentence proceedings regarding all three victims.

Detectives from Blacktown Local Area Command established Strike Force Nemesis to investigate these allegations. The police investigator was Senior Detective Mick Mahoney, of Blacktown Detectives Office.

Flaherty's other Sydney parishes included Guildford and Woy Woy and (in his final years) Auburn and Clemton Park. In 2011, after he retired from being in charge of a parish, the Sydney archdiocese continued to list him in the printed annual Australian Catholic Directory as one of its priests (a hospital chaplain, residing in the Clemton Park presbytery). After the police charged him in 2013, the archdiocese discreetly removed Flaherty's name from the 2014 edition of the directory. When he appeared in court, Flaherty was living an address at Wentworth Falls in the Blue Mountains, although officially the church still regards him as a priest in retirement (that is, a priest without church appointment or duties).

• Broken Rites is continuing its research about Father Robert Flaherty.