AUSTRALIA
SBS
AAP
19 SEP 2016
A senior member of the Catholic Church insists he doesn’t recall NSW priest John Farrell making child abuse confessions during a meeting they both attended 24 years ago.
National director of Catholic Mission Brian Lucas has told the child sex abuse royal commission he doesn’t remember Fr Farrell making detailed admissions about abusing five boys in the 1980s, while he was an assistant priest at Moree in northern NSW.
Fr Farrell allegedly confessed at the 1992 meeting to touching some of the boys on the leg, and fondling the genitals and having oral sex with others.
Fr Lucas and two other senior priests, Wayne Peters and John Usher, were at the meeting.
The admissions were detailed in a letter by Fr Peters to then-Bishop of Armidale Kevin Manning eight days after the meeting, but Fr Lucas said he doesn’t remember them.
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