AUSTRALIA
The Guardian
Australian Associated Press
Thursday 22 September 2016
A senior Catholic church figure has admitted giving conflicting accounts of what he meant in a diary entry he made about paedophile priest John Farrell and child sexual assault.
The former vicar general of Sydney John Usher told the child sexual abuse royal commission his 1992 note about a plan to defrock Farrell “following CSA [child sexual assault]” meant “following a CSA meeting”, not following assaults committed by Farrell.
Usher and another senior church official have denied that Farrell admitted to them at a September 1992 meeting that he had abused boys in the 1980s.
The commission heard that in 2012 Usher told an inquiry he couldn’t explain the “cryptic” diary note and didn’t know what it meant. But in a statement to police in May he said “CSA” referred to matters Farrell had already been in court for.
Probed about the three different accounts, he told the child sexual abuse royal commission he had “no explanation”.
“I’m only human and I made some different comments,” he said on Thursday.
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