Barrister Priest Told Clergy to Avoid Notes of Sexual Abuse Claims

By Catherine Armitage
Canberra Times
July 25, 2013

http://www.canberratimes.com.au/national/barrister-priest-told-clergy-to-avoid-notes-of-sexual-abuse-claims-20130724-2qjqh.html

Father Brian Lucas agreed that studying law taught the discipline of good note-taking.

But despite being a non-practising barrister with a fistful of law qualifications, the senior figure within the Catholic Church on Wednesday told an inquiry into sexual abuse he never made notes when dealing with about 35 priests accused of sex crimes.

The inquiry also heard that Father Brian wrote advice for clergy that it was a good idea not to take notes during interviews with accused priests to avoid the material being exposed during any ''subsequent legal process''.

Asked repeatedly about his own practice of not taking notes, Father Brian insisted it could be ''unproductive'' because the priest would stop speaking with him.

He testified that he never reported priests accused of sexually abusing children to police. He had no recollection at all of a meeting in 1993 when the paedophile priest Denis McAlinden ''opened up and confessed … freely'' to him, as stated by McAlinden in a letter tendered as evidence.

For about six years from 1990 it was Father Brian's job to confront priests accused of sexual abuse around NSW and the ACT and persuade them to leave the ministry, he told the inquiry.

In that time he dealt with about 35 priests, ''seducing'' more than 10 of them with ''strong armed'' tactics into agreeing to resign the priesthood. He said the best way of keeping children safe from priestly abuse was to take the offending priest out of the ministry, and that was his priority.

He said ''it staggers me and shocks me'' that McAlinden practised as a priest and worked at a school of 7000 children from kindergarten upwards in the Philippines after his priestly faculties were removed in Australia in 1993.

''Were you satisfied after your dealings with McAlinden that appropriate child protection steps had been taken?'' asked the counsel assisting the inquiry, Julia Lonergan, SC. ''It was probably the best that was on offer at the time,'' Father Brian replied.

On his first day in the witness stand, in the eighth week of the inquiry into alleged police and church cover-ups of sexual abuse by the Hunter Valley priests James Fletcher and McAlinden, Father Lucas cut a stern and confident figure.

It was the day after a victim known as AH first reduced the Newcastle courtroom to tears then won warm applause by explaining the cost to his life of years of ''dreadful'' abuse from the ages of 12 to 18 by Fletcher, who was convicted and died in jail.

Father Brian, general secretary of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference, peered intently at Ms Lonergan through glasses perched on his nose, answering her questions with little hesitation.

"Is the real position as to why you didn't want to take any note that you didn't want it to have to be exposed in any subsequent legal process?" Ms Lonergan asked.

''I think that would be a reasonable comment,'' he replied.

She asked whether he wrote his views for other clergy to the effect that it was a good idea not to take notes "so that a subsequent legal process that would compel production of them cannot be successful''.

"In some instances that would be accurate," Father Brian responded.

He said it was a "serious and well-understood dilemma" within church legal circles that clergy risked being charged with the crime of misprision of a felony, or concealing a serious offence, if they did not go to police with victims' complaints when victims did not want them to.

In a situation where he had to choose between risking criminal liability for misprision of a felony and betraying a victim's wishes, he would choose to respect the victim's wishes, he said. Father Brian's evidence continues.

A spokeswoman for the Australian Catholic Bishop's Conference, Beth Doherty, said the church hierarchy would stand by Father Brian.

''There's no question at all over whether he will continue in that role, unless the inquiry finds that he has acted in some way with any misconduct,'' Ms Doherty said.