AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald
March 13, 2018
By Peter Gogarty
A CONVERGENCE of events has got me thinking about a question I raised during the 2013/14 Special Commission of Inquiry into Hunter Catholic paedophile priests James Fletcher and Denis McAlinden.
They were the preparations in New Zealand for a child abuse royal commission, a chat with a friend, and the debt of gratitude offered to courageous Newcastle woman Anthea Halpin by the Philippines ambassador to New Zealand for her role in having McAlinden removed from the Philippines in 1995.
The question is what the Catholic Church has done to identify and support victims of the paedophile priests it knowingly and deliberately exported all over the world – a reality proven by formal inquiries in Australia, Canada, the United States and Ireland. I remain particularly concerned about victims in developing countries where faith in the Catholic Church has rarely been questioned – much less shaken.
In the Hunter inquiry it was revealed that from 1949 until 1996 Denis McAlinden abused children, that people in the church including Bishop Leo Clarke, Vicar General Patrick Cotter, Bishop Michael Malone, Monsignor Allan Hart and Father Brian Lucas had knowledge of McAlinden’s offending, but he was not reported to police until shortly before his death. Instead he was moved from place to place, and those places included England, Ireland, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea and the Philippines.
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