Questions over Gay Porn: Inquiry

By Ian Kirkwood
Newcastle Herald
July 9, 2013

http://www.theherald.com.au/story/1625941/questions-over-gay-porn-inquiry/?cs=391

POLICE whistleblower Peter Fox has been questioned at length over his reaction to gay pornography found at the Lochinvar presbytery a few months after Father Jim Fletcher took up duties there as a priest.

In a session of cross examination before lunch on Tuesday, Detective Chief Inspector Peter Fox was taken through evidence he had previously given to the Special Commission of Inquiry sitting in Newcastle.

Mr Fox had said previously that a lay worker had found gay pornography in the presbytery and that Mr Fox believed it had belonged to Fletcher, who was subsequently convicted of abusing an altar boy and who died in jail in 2009.

But counsel assisting the inquiry, Julia Lonergan, put it to him that he had no evidence that proved the pornography belonged to Fletcher, and that another priest, Father Desmond Harrigan, had told him it belonged to him.

Mr Fox agreed Father Harrigan had told him he owned the pornography and had destroyed it.

Later, answering solicitor Elizabeth McLaughlin for Father Harrigan, Mr Fox said it was the nature of police work that people did not always tell the truth.

‘‘As a detective, we don’t always accept people at their word,’’ Mr Fox said.

He agreed with Ms Lonergan that he may not have had a completely open mind about the Lochinvar matter, and may have believed the pornography was Fletcher’s regardless of Father Harrigan’s contentions.

As Ms Lonergan made clear, the detail of Mr Fox’s policing activities was important in this case because he had raised the Lochinvar presbytery pornography as an example of the Catholic Church destroying evidence in complaints that led to the creation of this investigation.

Asked why he had not sought a formal police statement from Father Harrigan about the Lochinvar pornography, Mr Fox said he did not think it was fully relevant to the Fletcher prosecution at the time.

Questioned by Ms McLaughlin, Mr Fox defended his procedures, saying he ‘‘could not foresee this inquiry, of course, at the time’’.

Ms McLaughlin said she wanted a non-publication order on this section of evidence but Ms Lonergan said the issue had already been raised in public evidence previously.

Commissioner Margaret Cunneen said she was inclined to agree.