Nun Misled Police and Tipped off Predator Priest, Mp Claims

By Dan Box
The Australian
May 9, 2013

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/state-politics/nun-misled-police-and-tipped-off-predator-priest-mp-claims/story-e6frgczx-1226637917023

A CATHOLIC nun provided false evidence to a police investigation and was involved in tipping off a pedophile priest on the night before his impending arrest, NSW MP Troy Grant says.

Mr Grant, a former policeman who led the prosecution of priest Vince Ryan for child abuse during the 1990s, said the nun and another senior cleric from the NSW diocese of Maitland-Newcastle had deliberately interfered with his investigation.

Mr Grant did not name the nun, while the senior cleric, Monsignor Patrick Cotter, has since died.

Speaking yesterday after giving evidence to the NSW special commission of inquiry into child abuse, Mr Grant said the office of the Director of Public Prosecutions ultimately decided against charging the pair with perverting the course of justice.

"I do still disagree with that decision. I don't blame them for it, I just disagree . . . I hope anyone who has become a victim since that day isn't a victim because the DPP decided not to act," Mr Grant said.

The Nationals MP for Dubbo said he would provide evidence of this and other alleged cover-ups by senior clergy in the diocese if required to by the state inquiry or the federal royal commission into child abuse.

"Their level of culpability has never been tested in the court system, they've never been questioned or put before their peers to answer for what they did," he said.

"What they did . . . meant that a lot of victims need not have been victims -- that's where the tragedy is."

In his evidence to the inquiry, Mr Grant explicitly denied claims by a serving detective Peter Fox that he once said a "Catholic mafia" existed within the police force and had hindered investigations of pedophile priests.

"I have never had any reason to report any type of activity that would be perceived to be any form of Catholic mafia or any interference from the police force at any time," Mr Grant said.

"It's (a phrase) that obviously grabs attention. It's one that I'm sure I would remember ever saying, it's one that nobody who knows me would expect me to say."

Detective Chief Inspector Fox had previously told the inquiry that Mr Grant made the claim during a telephone conversation between the two men over a decade ago, when both were serving officers.

Inspector Fox has publicly claimed he was ordered to "stand down from the case" of pedophile priest Denis McAlinden, although the inquiry has heard he was never formally assigned to this investigation.

Instead, the policeman pursued his own, private, investigation of McAlinden, working closely with a local reporter to whom he continued to leak details of the official inquiry, despite being ordered not to contact her.