MALTA/AUSTRALIA
Times of Malta
A Maltese man has blown the lid on the Australian Church by quitting the priesthood and claiming the Victorian Archdiocese has been deleting child sex abuse records.
Victor Buhagiar claims he “saw and heard” the Archbishop of Victoria order a secretary to turn off a recorder before discussing clerical sex abuse during a Church council meeting in April 2012.
He bowed out as a priest last January, saying his subsequent enquiries into the matter had led him to a metaphorical dead end.
“I believe there’s a devil in the hierarchy,” Mr Buhagiar has now told Australian investigative TV show Today Tonight.
“I suspect the recorder was turned off to create a black hole, so that investigators will…find nothing. Certain data is not being recorded in any way, shape or form.”
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.