AUSTRALIA
The Australian
September 16, 2016
DAN BOX
Crime reporterSydney
@DanBox10
George Pell was told about child abuse committed by a pedophile Catholic priest a decade before a police strike force was set up to investigate the man’s crimes, a royal commission has heard.
The priest, John Farrell, was the subject of repeated allegations received by the church as early as 1984, but was jailed only after the strike force was set up in 2012 following media reports.
Farrell is also alleged to have confessed during a meeting with three senior clerics to abusing five altar boys in the Armidale diocese in northern NSW in 1992, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse heard. One of the clerics, John Usher, later worked with Cardinal Pell as chancellor of the Sydney archdiocese.
Farrell, also known as Father F, was convicted in May of 62 offences against 12 victims.
Cardinal Pell, now a senior Vatican official, has been named in evidence during several hearings and has given evidence in person relating to his time in Ballarat, Melbourne and Sydney.
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