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	Hidden Sins of the Church Sydney Morning Herald [Australia] June 17, 2006 http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/hidden-sins-of-the-church/ 2006/06/16/1149964746496.html As a 10-year-old altar boy, Peter McCloskey was raped by a priest. Years later, in an attempt to exorcise his demons, he scoured church records for answers - and came up against a brick wall. Linda Morris reports. WHEN Peter McCloskey took his own life in April, the Catholic Church might have thought another sordid chapter of clerical sex abuse had been closed. But a search for understanding, justice and compensation has taken the McCloskey family on a journey halfway around the world to the doorstep of the Sydney Archbishop, Cardinal George Pell. Father Denis Daly, the priest who abused McCloskey as a 10-year-old altar boy in Limerick, Ireland, had served as a priest in Sydney between 1951 and 1963. According to McCloskey's family, the priest had had a run-in with Sydney police over what was described as a "moral lapse". He was shuffled to Western Australia and then was allowed to serve in San Francisco and England before heading back to Ireland. The family maintains that even beyond the grave, Daly has enjoyed the protection of the Catholic Church, both in Limerick and Sydney. At a press conference called in Ireland in April, Peter McCloskey's mother, Mary, blamed the Irish church for her son's death. Peter had been her blond, curly-haired baby with big brown eyes who had grown up into an outgoing, vivacious man, albeit with serious behavioural problems. Piously Catholic, the family felt double-crossed. Not only had they to comprehend the impact of the sexual abuse, they had to deal with what they saw as the Irish church's flawed and excessively legalistic response. And they believe the heartache could have been avoided had the Sydney church taken action against their troublesome priest all those years ago. Father Daly was one of the many Irish immigrant priests who came to Australia to serve a growing flock. He arrived fresh from the seminary at St Patrick's College, Carlow, a week before Christmas in 1951. He was appointed to a succession of parishes including Forest Lodge, Manly, Beverly Hills and St John of God, Richmond, never stopping long. Extracts of Daly's file compiled by Pauline Garland, the archivist for the Sydney diocese, suggest Daly had a "considerable problem with alcohol" and was "not responsive to professional psychiatric intervention". The files mention a "very grave incident" and the bad behaviour of Daly at a wedding in 1957. A year later, Cardinal Gilroy, the archbishop of Sydney, tried to impress on Daly the need to take a holiday in light of his state of "exhaustion". In 1963 Daly ran foul of the NSW police. The church's file referred to the problem as a "moral lapse". Police directed that he undergo psychiatric treatment, and the case was suspended on condition that he left NSW. That a Catholic priest was run out of town might have been enough to have alerted the church authorities. Instead, Joseph McCloskey, Peter's brother, said the church washed its hands of the priest, shifting him out of sight to Western Australia. After three years of satisfactory service in Perth, he returned to Sydney, this time the parish of Penshurst, whereupon the police insisted he quit NSW a second time. Cardinal Gilroy wrote: "I recalled Father Daly to Sydney in the expectation that the three years' absence would have satisfied the requirements of the police. In this I was mistaken." From Sydney Daly was appointed to a parish in San Francisco, and then sought supply work in England. He later returned to Ireland, to be closer to his family. In 1978 the Bishop of Connor and Down in Ireland wrote to Sydney for a confidential assessment of Daly's character before appointing him as a diocesan priest, only to be told by Sydney he had left "this archdiocese under a cloud because of a moral lapse". "What is extraordinary about Father Denis Daly is him being transferred and wandering the world as a locum priest, if you like, with a letter from his bishop saying he is free to work," said Colm O'Gorman of the Irish victims' support group, One Of Four. "It was only when the diocese was asked by other dioceses could they incardinate him that Sydney ever mentioned his moral lapse." It was in Limerick in 1981 that Peter McCloskey, aged 10, encountered Daly, a supply priest in the local parish of Christ the King at Caherdavin, Limerick. In 2002, 15 years after the death of Daly, when the Irish church was encouraging victims of abuse to come forward, McCloskey made contact through his solicitors with the diocese of Limerick. Only later did Peter tell his brother that Daly had raped him in the sacristy before and after Mass. Peter began his search for the truth. He flew to Sydney in February 2004, where he demanded to see Daly's file and met members of the diocese's Professional Standards Board. It was in Sydney that he discovered the priest's run-in with the police. He later wrote to one of the Irish churchmen handling his case that he had travelled alone, his only companion being his "never-ending determination to discover the truth". "I can only describe it as a journey into the valley of Satan himself," he wrote. Peter McCloskey described his case as explosive, one that could bring "the church in three continents to its knees", and he ended the correspondence quoting Ernest Hemingway: "You can decide to die on your feet or live on your knees". His health, fragile anyway, began to deteriorate. McCloskey returned to Ireland and was admitted to a psychiatric unit, suffering repeated bouts of mental illness. On April 1 this year, at the age of 37, the father of three daughters was found dead two days after a mediation meeting with the Limerick diocese appeared to break down. The church, Mary McCloskey declared shortly after, had nailed her son to the cross "well in advance of Good Friday". She said: "Nothing can now wipe away the pain that Peter suffered throughout his life, but justice through the truth that he valued more than life itself can be testament to his memory." Cardinal George Pell joined Bishop Donal Murray, leader of the Limerick church, to express his "deep sadness". Three weeks after Peter McCloskey's death, Murray publicly accepted "the truth of Peter McCloskey's experience of clerical child sexual abuse", describing him as a man of extraordinary honesty, integrity and courage. He admitted the diocese had failed to properly inform itself of Daly's suitability for ministry. But Murray also defended his church's record, saying that it was only fears for McCloskey's fragile mental state that stopped them originally disclosing the contents of the Sydney file. That file on Daly detailed his problem with alcohol - but there was nothing, Bishop Murray said, to alert the church to any allegation of the sexual abuse of minors. The diocese of Limerick and the archdiocese of Sydney had contacted NSW police in an attempt to discover the nature of the "moral lapse", but discovered there were no records on Daly. Nor could the church pin down a rumour, emanating out of Sydney, that it might have involved an "adult sexual matter". In any event, McCloskey was unwilling to consider even the possibility that the police complaint against Daly was anything other than child sexual abuse, the bishop said. For its part, the Sydney diocese does not accept responsibility for abuse suffered by McCloskey in another diocese where Daly was permanently located. Nor that it failed in its duty to protect Catholics, particularly children. "We do not know if other action pertinent to the norms of the time was undertaken by the then church authorities because the file is silent and the witnesses are not available," said the archdiocese's chancellor, John Usher. "There is an assumption that the priest's then issue with the NSW police did not involve matters with children as we would expect that such complaints would usually have been recorded by the police. "There is nothing to suggest that the archdiocese did not pass to overseas church authorities all the relevant information it needed concerning the priest when required. "In terms of obligations they are clearly different today in that they are informed by recent significant developments in the means of learning and the education of church authorities concerning pyscho-sexual dysfunction and by the development of civil law accountabilities." Joseph McCloskey disagrees. "The Archdiocese of Sydney enabled Father Denis Daly to work in an area which afforded him unique access to children," he said. "They did this despite knowing that there were serious issues around his behaviour. They endorsed his ministry on three continents and provided letters of referral and good character from 1963 until his death. "Does anyone really believe that a moral lapse in 1963 referred to an encounter with an adult male or female? "In 1963, the NSW Police insisted on his removal and repeated that demand in 1966. My brother Peter was born in 1969, six years after the police removed Father Denis Daly for the first time. The greater sin is committed by those clergy that enabled a pedophile to run free in the precious world of childhood and innocence." Weeks after Peter McCloskey left Australia following his fact-finding mission, a second complaint against Daly was made in Sydney. The diocese accepts it related to child sexual abuse dating back to Manly in 1957 and says the matter has now been settled to the satisfaction of the complainant. O'Gorman says while the Sydney diocese had helped Peter by providing him Daly's file, it had so far failed to acknowledge its historic and Christian responsibility. "No one is saying Cardinal Pell is personally responsible but there is an institutional and an archdiocesan responsibility that should be acknowledged. "This is not about blame, but over 30, 40 years they failed their Christian responsibility to make sure that a priest like Father Daly was not in ministry with vulnerable people." "There is nothing to suggest that the archdiocese did not pass to overseas church authorities all the relevant information it needed concerning the priest when required. "In terms of obligations they are clearly different today in that they are informed by recent significant developments in the means of learning and the education of church authorities concerning pyscho-sexual dysfunction and by the development of civil law accountabilities." Joseph McCloskey disagrees. "The Archdiocese of Sydney enabled Father Denis Daly to work in an area which afforded him unique access to children," he said. "They did this despite knowing that there were serious issues around his behaviour. They endorsed his ministry on three continents and provided letters of referral and good character from 1963 until his death. "Does anyone really believe that a moral lapse in 1963 referred to an encounter with an adult male or female? "In 1963, the NSW Police insisted on his removal and repeated that demand in 1966. My brother Peter was born in 1969, six years after the police removed Father Denis Daly for the first time. The greater sin is committed by those clergy that enabled a pedophile to run free in the precious world of childhood and innocence." Weeks after Peter McCloskey left Australia following his fact-finding mission, a second complaint against Daly was made in Sydney. The diocese accepts it related to child sexual abuse dating back to Manly in 1957 and says the matter has now been settled to the satisfaction of the complainant. O'Gorman says while the Sydney diocese had helped Peter by providing him Daly's file, it had so far failed to acknowledge its historic and Christian responsibility. "No one is saying Cardinal Pell is personally responsible but there is an institutional and an archdiocesan responsibility that should be acknowledged. "This is not about blame, but over 30, 40 years they failed their Christian responsibility to make sure that a priest like Father Daly was not in ministry with vulnerable people."
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