AUSTRALIA
Red Flag
18 July 2015 | Robert Austin
Mick Armstrong’s article on Catholic and other church child abuse (Red Flag #49) is a worthy addition to his contributions to working class history over many years. However, Armstrong’s article can be pressed further.
The precursor to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse was a NSW special commission of inquiry into high-level police and Catholic Church collaboration to protect paedophile priests in the Hunter region of NSW.
Commissioner Margaret Cuneen found no evidence to support the claim, but tried to discredit detective chief inspector Peter Fox, whose earlier investigations had revealed decades of church torture of children. His seniors stopped the investigations prematurely. Cuneen parroted the police view that Fox had “lost his objectivity” by empathising with victims.
Under the guise of bourgeois legality, Cuneen also provided a podium for senior police to attack Fairfax journalist Joanne McCarthy, whose investigative reports drew heavily on Fox’s, blew the lid off the cover-up and, combined with popular protest, forced the state to appear to be addressing the issue.
But a key volume of the commission’s four-volume report related to potential criminal charges has been embargoed.
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