AUSTRALIA
The Conversation
David Hamer
Associate Professor of Evidence and Proof, University of Sydney
Former priest John Farrell was sentenced on Monday to a minimum of 18 years’ jail for dozens of sexual offences committed against 12 children, many of them altar boys, in the 1970s and 1980s.
Police may now shift their focus to whether senior clergymen can be prosecuted for an alleged cover-up that may have delayed the investigation and prosecution of Farrell by 20 years or more.
It is difficult to predict what evidence such an investigation will uncover. But some key pieces of evidence are already on the public record.
This includes a letter, dated September 11, 1992, from Father Wayne Peters (who was, until his death last year, vicar-general of Armidale) to Bishop Kevin Manning – now bishop emeritus of Parramatta. The letter outlines Farrell’s detailed confessions of child sexual abuse at a meeting eight days earlier with Peters, Father Brian Lucas (now director of Catholic Mission) and Father John Usher (until last year, Chancellor of Sydney).
Also on the public record are more recent statements made by the four clergymen when the letter came to light and was the subject of a Four Corners report in 2012. It prompted the Catholic Church to respond in the form of a commissioned report.
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