AUSTRALIA
ABC News
By Quentin McDermott and Peter Cronau
Updated 20 Aug 2014
An investigation should be launched into a cluster of paedophile priests at the Holy Family School in Doveton, one of Victoria’s poorest communities, according to one of the MPs who conducted an inquiry last year into the handling of child abuse by religious and other organisations.
Victorian Labor MP Frank McGuire made a statement to the Victorian Parliament today, following revelations in last week’s ABC Four Corners program, In the Name of the Law.
The program revealed that Cardinal George Pell did not explain in oral evidence to last year’s Victorian inquiry that the church had held a private hearing in 1997 at which the finding was made that local parish priest, Father Peter Searson, had been guilty of the sexual abuse of two children.
Father Searson was eventually removed from the Doveton parish and charged by police for an unrelated physical assault of a young boy attending the Holy Family School.
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