AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald
[with video]
By JOANNE McCARTHY March 17, 2015
COMMENT
THE charging of Archbishop Philip Wilson for allegedly concealing a child sex allegation against Hunter priest Jim Fletcher is significant for anyone who has been sexually abused as a child, whether in an institution or by a family member.
It says that no one is above the law. It says that child sexual abuse is a crime and is ultimately about the abuse of power.
And what we have seen so distressingly since the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse is that many, many children over many decades have reported that they were sexually abused, and many adults in many institutions beyond the Catholic Church have failed them.
It is fitting, if immensely saddening, that the most senior Catholic clergyman in the world to be charged with concealing the child sex crimes of another priest should be from the Hunter region.
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