AUSTRALIA
7 News
By Sam McKeith and Megan Neil
March 17, 2015
The Catholic archbishop of Adelaide will fight an allegation he concealed child sexual abuse by a priest, a charge a victims’ group says is unlikely to be the last faced by a senior church official.
Philip Wilson is believed to be the most senior Catholic official in the world to face charges of this nature.
NSW police allege Wilson concealed a serious offence regarding child sexual abuse in the state’s Hunter region.
The abuse was allegedly committed during the 1970s by another priest, when both men worked in the Maitland Diocese, near Newcastle.
Wilson said he was disappointed police had decided to charge him and would vigorously defend his innocence.
“The suggestion appears to be that I failed to bring to the attention of police a conversation I am alleged to have had in 1976, when I was a junior priest, that a now deceased priest had abused a child,” he said in a statement on Tuesday.
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