AUSTRALIA
National Catholic Reporter
Stephen Crittenden | Aug. 8, 2013
SYDNEY After eight weeks of intense, graphic and sometimes sad testimony, public hearings have ended for the New South Wales special commission of inquiry into clerical abuse in the Maitland-Newcastle diocese, north of Sydney.
Forty witnesses have given testimony in open court before Commissioner Margaret Cunneen, and many others have been heard in camera, or in closed proceedings.
New South Wales Premier Barry O’Farrell created the inquiry in November, days before former Prime Minister Julia Gillard called a national royal commission into child sexual abuse in Australia.
O’Farrell and Gillard were responding to allegations by a senior police whistleblower, Chief Inspector Peter Fox, who said he could “testify from my own experience that the church covers up, silences victims, hinders police investigations, alerts offenders, destroys evidence and moves priests to protect the good name of the church.”
The inquiry’s mandate was to look into whether the Catholic church covered up abuse by two late priests, Denis McAlinden and James Fletcher, and whether Fox was inappropriately removed from his investigations.
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