AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald
IT IS more than 15 years since the late Newcastle District Court Judge Ralph Coolahan had a heated exchange with a lawyer from the Director of Public Prosecutions in a case involving a Newcastle Anglican priest.
The charges were child sex allegations against the priest dating back 26 years. The alleged victims – two brothers aged 38 and 36 – were in the court.
Judge Coolahan lashed the DPP’s handling of aspects of the case as a “disgrace”, a “complete disgrace” and a “farce”, and said it was “just ridiculous” the brothers had “waited 20 years” after they turned 18 before reporting allegations to police.
His comments make disturbing reading given what we know after more than three years of evidence to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual abuse. They are also disturbing given what judges should, and would, have known about disclosures by alleged victims even back in 2001, when the Newcastle Anglican priest case was heard by Judge Coolahan, and eventually dropped.
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