Church Believed Pedophile Priests Who Apologised Could Be Cured, Inquiry Told

By Janet Fife-Yeomans
News.com.au
September 9, 2013

http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/church-believed-pedophile-priests-who-apologised-could-be-cured-inquiry-told/story-e6frfkp9-1226715213489

Father John Usher arrives at the inquiry today.

Australia's Catholic bishops took some convincing that even if a pedophile priest said he was sorry, he was more than likely to offend again, the NSW church child abuse inquiry has been told today.

"We had to convince church leaders that they had to come to terms with this," Father John Usher said.

He said it had been a steep learning curve to learn about the way pedophiles operated.

Father Usher, a former member of the NSW Child Protection Council and currently Chancellor of the Archdiocese of Sydney, is giving evidence as the inquiry gets to the heart of its investigation.

The commission chaired by Commissioner Margaret Cunneen SC is sitting in Sydney after weeks in Newcastle.

It is hearing evidence about whether and to what extent Catholic Church officials facilitated, helped or co-operated with police investigations into child sex abuse within the church.

It includes whether police investigations were obstructed by the failure to report alleged abuse, discouraging witnesses to come forward, alerting police to alleged offenders or the destruction of evidence.

Father Usher said he always made notes about discussions he had with alleged offenders or victims and he said that some of the evidence already given to the first stage of the inquiry, into child abused in the Maitland and Newcastle diocese, by Father Brian Lucas was "not in accordance with my recollection."

More details are expected on those differences later today when Father Lucas, one of the country's most senior Catholics as general secretary of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference, is expected to return to the witness box.

Father Usher said the church was strong on forgiveness and reconciliation and back about 20 years ago, if priest or other clergy said they were sorry and would never do it again, it was usual to believe them and get them some counselling.

"We were trying to educate each other as well as the bishops," Father Usher, who sat on the first church group to confront the issue of pedophile clergy in the late 1980s.

"It is important to understand that the church like many other institutions really believed if someone committed these offences it was possible for them to go into therapy and be cured."

The inquiry continues.