AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald
By IAN KIRKWOOD June 24, 2013
FOR all its cast of characters, this Special Commission of Inquiry into the police handling of “certain child sexual abuse allegations” in the Catholic diocese of Maitland-Newcastle has a few star witnesses.
In an earlier bank of sittings, it was Detective Chief Inspector Peter Fox, whose allegations of collusion between church figures and senior police led to the inquiry in the first place.
Yesterday afternoon, though, it was the turn of Newcastle Herald journalist Joanne McCarthy, whose six years of reporting on child sexual abuse has “shone the light” on a previously hidden shame.
As the committee heard, Ms McCarthy won the 2012 Graham Perkin Australian Journalist of the Year award in March this year for her body of work on child sex abuse in the Catholic Church in the Hunter Valley.
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