AUSTRALIA
The Australian
A Catholic bishop has admitted destroying documents relating to child sexual abuse by priests after police raided his office.
Giving evidence to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, Bishop Bede Heather said he was “traumatised” when police investigating sexual allegations against three priests searched his office in the western Sydney diocese of Parramatta in 1994.
Before this, “I did not see myself as bound to take these complaints to the police,” Bishop Heather told the commission.
Following the police raid “I took the precaution of destroying all papers of mine which could have been to the disadvantage of persons with whom I dealt,” Bishop Bede wrote in a letter to the diocese’s lawyers.
That letter was provided to the commission by the law firm, Makinson & d’Apice, as Bishop Bede’s copy of the letter was also destroyed, the commission heard.
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