AUSTRALIA
ABC – PM
MARK COLVIN: At the child abuse Royal Commission hearings in Adelaide, the Archbishop of that Archdiocese, Philip Wilson, has admitted that the cases of intellectually disabled children abused at the St Ann’s special school could have been handled better.
Archbishop Wilson gave evidence that on taking office, he took steps to have the paedophile Brian Perkins extradited from Queensland after the police investigation had stalled.
But he conceded that the way he dealt with the families of the abused boys could have been better.
Samantha Donovan reports.
SAMANTHA DONOVAN: Philip Wilson became the Archbishop of Adelaide in late 2001.
By then, 10 years had gone by since police had become aware that as many as 30 intellectually disabled boys had been abused by convicted paedophile Brian Perkins, who’d been employed by the St Ann’s special school as a bus driver.
Perkins was in Queensland after skipping bail.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.