AUSTRALIA
Broken Rites
By a Broken Rites researcher (article updated on 22 October 2014)
A retired senior Catholic priest from western Sydney, Father Richard Cattell, has been undergoing preliminary court procedures (charged with child-sex offences) and now he is about to appear before Judge H. Syme in Sydney’s Penrith District Court for the final steps in the justice process. On the District Court schedule, Father Cattell is listed as case number 201400062169.
Father Cattell retired from parish work in the mid-1990s. He later lived privately at Port Macquarie on the New South Wales mid-north coast and, recently, on the Gold Coast in Queensland. On 28 February 2014, New South Wales detectives travelled to Tweed Heads, on the New South Wales side of the Queensland border, and interviewed Richard Cattell at Tweed Heads police station about one former altar boy who has alleged that he was sexually abused while Cattell was based at parishes in western Sydney in the 1980s.
Cattell was taken on 24 March 2014 to Tweed Heads Local Court, to enable the matter to be officially filed in New South Wales.
Richard St John Cattell, aged 73, was charged with indecent acts against this boy.
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