AUSTRALIA
The Australian
JUNE 20, 2014
Anthony Klan
Reporter-Investigations Unit
Sydney
THE Catholic Church has agreed to begin paying child-abuse victims of an Adelaide special school after 12 years of legal wrangling, following a petition that gained more than 104,000 signatures.
Peter Mitchell, whose son was sexually abused at the St Ann’s special school in Adelaide more than two decades ago, and who launched the petition in February, said the Catholic Archbishop for Adelaide, Philip Wilson, had agreed to meet him in mediation.
“The fact that lawyers for the Catholic Church have moved to end the fight through the courts and begin mediation on our cases is a huge breakthrough,’’ Mr Mitchell said.
Pedophile Brian Perkins abused and produced pornography of severely intellectually disabled children at the school, where he worked as a bus driver, between 1986 and 1991.
South Australian police seized photos of naked, disabled children at Perkins’s home in 1991, but he was not arrested until 1993.
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