Priest Faces up to 1980s Abuse Charges

ABC - 7.30
May 2, 2012

http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2012/s3493286.htm

[with video]

A Sydney priest who is a close associate of the NSW Attorney General has been arrested and charged with sexually abusing three girls and a boy over 15 years in the 1970s and 80s. The police investigation of Father Finian Egan followed allegations raised in a series of stories on this program. They examined the Church's response to the initial complaints, and the lengthy holdup in the criminal investigation, during which NSW Attorney General Greg Smith apparently dismissed one of the alleged victims as "money hungry". Tim Palmer reports.

TIM PALMER, REPORTER: After decades, this was a defining moment for two of the women who have alleged Father Finian Egan turned their lives upside down by sexually assaulting them as children.

KELLIE ROCHE, ABUSE VICTIM: It's a relief. For me it's like... it's finally... it's something's happening. Something legal is starting.

TIM PALMER: It was the Catholic Church that first investigated a series of allegations against Finian Egan made by Nikki Wells and Kellie Roche, who claimed he'd attacked them when they were at school or a fellowship at a north-west Sydney church.

ABUSE VICTIM: Even when I left that school and went to another high school we still attended the church.

TIM PALMER: Both alleged victims were scathing in the Church's handling of their complaints.

KELLIE ROCHE: That nothing they did has helped me heal. If anything, it made me feel like they were protecting him.

TIM PALMER: In particular, they were angered to find that after being told Father Egan had been suspended from the priesthood, he was instead honoured in 2009 with a special service at which he officiated, marking his 50 years in the priesthood - and that he was then permitted by his bishop to conduct mass eight times: on several of those occasions in Ireland.

KELLIE ROCHE: It makes you feel like a victim again; like the Church, even though they upheld my allegations and they tell me that they believe me, they don't show it by taking away his robes as a priest.

TIM PALMER: Prompted by the 7.30 stories in 2010, more women came forward alleging serious abuse at the hands of Finian Egan in his role as priest and basketball coach at The Entrance.

PETA SNEESBY, ABUSE VICTIM: And I've decided after 40... I can't believe I'm saying this, after 40-odd years that I'm actually talking about it. It's quite... quite soul destroying. I'm hoping that I reach a better place by the end of it.

TIM PALMER: The new allegations saw the police widen their Sydney-based investigation to the NSW Central Coast, but then the process began to drag, and after nearly two years without arrest or charge, the alleged victims were wondering what had happened to an investigation which, by then, had been sitting on the State DPP's desk for months.

NIKKI WELLS, ABUSE VICTIM: The torture of the investigation, the torture of the hold-ups with the DPP has been horrendous.

TIM PALMER: Last month, 7.30 detailed the association between Father Finian Egan and one of his former parishioners, now the Attorney-General of NSW Greg Smith, who is close enough to the priest to mention him warmly in his maiden speech to Parliament.

GREG SMITH, NSW ATTORNEY-GENERAL: Generous Father Finian Egan charmed us with his Irish wit and his pastorly devotion to his flock.

TIM PALMER: Finian Egan's former solicitor, Damien Tudehope, is now the Attorney-General's chief of staff, and the alleged victims' concerns intensified after being told of a conversation revealed on this program that took place between Attorney-General Greg Smith and another priest. That priest recounted how Greg Smith had described one of the alleged victims as just wanting $1 million from the Catholic Church.

DAVID SHOEBRIDGE, NSW GREENS: There is, for me, no political excuse for the Attorney-General of the day making derogatory comments about a victim.

TIM PALMER: At the time, the Attorney-General stated he had no recollection of saying those words, but today the Opposition was pressuring him on the issue again.

PAUL LYNCH, NSW SHADOW ATTORNEY-GENERAL: My question is to the Attorney-General. Did you or did you not tell a priest in a meeting last year that an alleged victim of child sexual assault was "just trying to get $1 million out of the Church?"

GREG SMITH: I've previously made a statement to this House on Father Egan. I understand he was charged today. The question that the Member for Liverpool has asked relates to a possible complainant in those matters. It would be therefore inappropriate for me to make any further comment.

TIM PALMER: But there was action after the 7.30 revelations last month. On the same night that they were broadcast, the wheels of justice suddenly whirred back into gear, when the alleged victims were informed that the NSW DPP had at last referred the charges back to investigating police. Finian Egan's imminent arrest was settled. When he comes to court next month it will be to face 17 charges, ranging from the indecent assault of 11-year-old and 16-year-old girls and a 14-year-old boy, to the rape of a 17-year-old girl.