Priest Complains of Poor Memory of Abuse

By Catherine Armitage
Sydney Morning Herald
July 19, 2013

http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/priest-complains-of-poor-memory-of-abuse-20130718-2q79n.html

Paedophile: Denis McAlinden. Photo: Supplied

A Catholic priest who took steps to inform police about the paedophile priest Denis McAlinden in 1999 has admitted he could have gone to police several years earlier even though the two victims he knew about did not want the police involved, a state government inquiry has heard.

Father William Burston agreed he had known in 1996 that McAlinden had been stripped of his priestly faculties due to concerns he had sexually abused children. A letter he had written to McAlinden that year seeking his co-operation with the diocese's attempt to ''laicise'' or defrock him has been tendered in evidence. But it was not until 1999 that Father Burston wrote to the church's professional standards office, which handled sexual abuse complaints, suggesting ''intelligence could be given to the police'' about McAlinden, the inquiry into alleged church and police cover-ups of child sexual abuse by Catholic priests in the Hunter Valley has heard.

Father Burston had earlier given evidence that the reason no report was made to the police was that the victims did not want it.

As vicar general of the Maitland-Newcastle diocese between 1996 and 2001, Father Burston agreed with barrister Maria Gerace cross-examining that he would have been ''alive'' from 1997 onwards to the question of whether or not information that came to him concerning priests sexually abusing children should be reported to the police, due to the report of the royal commission into paedophilia that year.

Father Burston was accused of applying ''selective'' recall to his evidence about Denis McAlinden and of seeking to distance himself from the priest. He denied the accusations. In the witness box he denied recalling events surrounding McAlinden scores of times, and claimed no memory of the circumstances in which he wrote letters to and about the priest. He could not recall that the diocese had paid for one-way tickets for McAlinden to go to Papua New Guinea in the 1970s, and Britain in 1993, although he agreed it would have been ''fairly unusual'' for the diocese to do that.

Father Burston said he has a memory problem which prevents him accurately recalling events, which he attributed to having received ''10 anaesthetics in the last eight years''.

Counsel assisting the inquiry David Kell said to the priest that ''you have just been selective in terms of what you are willing to recall and able to recall, that is the case, isn't it?'' ''No,'' Father Burston responded.

He also said that although Father James Fletcher had been his friend since 1971, he could not recall any concerns being raised when Fletcher was abruptly removed from one parish to another in the 1970s. Fletcher was convicted on nine offences of child sexual abuse in 2004.