Catholic Church in the Gun over Child Sex Cover-Ups
By Keith Moor
NOTHING in the new parliamentary report on sexual abuse cover-ups by the Catholic Church comes as a surprise to paedophile catcher Chris O'Connor. He was reactiing to the horrific sexual abuse cover-ups by the Catholic Church which has led to a parliamentary committee recommending new offences for grooming children and failing to report crimes. The nation's first inquiry into the handling of child abuse by religious and other organisations found several thousand children were criminally abused by people within non-government organisations in Victoria over decades. The recently retired detective senior sergeant has been Victoria Police's child sex expert for decades. He has been warning for years about the disgraceful behaviour of the Catholic Church and other institutions with responsibility for caring for children Sen-Sgt O'Connor said evidence suggested some priests chose to be priests because of the hold it would give them over children they could abuse, just as other paedophiles were attracted to jobs which gave them easy access to children. He said the current Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse should have been ordered many years ago as there was ample evidence such an inquiry was warranted. "I don't know why there wasn't as the warnings have been there that there have been problems," Sen-Sgt O'Connor said. "These institutions were ready hives for people who had a propensity to abuse children. "Such people were drawn to the institutions because of the access they gave them to children and the power over children they obtained through the institutions. "From where I sit, and from the many, many people who are involved in the child protection industry who I have spoken to over the past 25 years, we are as one voice in relation to this and that is there should have been an inquiry years ago. "Governments have been told and told and told about paedophile problems in institutions. "I defy anybody who has had anything to do with institutions and child protection to say they never realised it is as bad as it is. "The Catholic Church is very much in the gun at the moment and so it should be because, historically, outside of the State, it has been the most responsible organisation for the care and protection of children and it has failed to do so. "There is ample evidence the Catholic Church has protected paedophile priests." Sen-Sgt O'Connor said some institutions relied on children often not being believed to quietly move paedophiles to different locations so as to keep the problem hidden and in-house. "I've got no doubt various institutions which were supposed to care for children knew child sexual abuse was happening in their organisation and didn't report it," he said. "The Catholic Church is a classic example. "It had institutions in the US and elsewhere in the world where priests, if there were allegations of inappropriate behaviour, were sent. "They were sort of like dry out centres where you would send alcoholics. "The priests were treated by psychologists and effectively given a certificate saying they were fixed and they could go back. "But there is no cure. You never are not a paedophile once you have become one. "So the priests would come back to Australia and offend again. "The police were never involved. The church didn't consider it was a police issue, they determined it was a welfare issue it could handle quietly." Of all the paedophiles Sen-Sgt O'Connor has dealt with and locked up during his 36 years with Victoria Police, he describes Catholic priest Michael Glennon as the worst. Glennon was found guilty in 2003 by two juries of 26 sex offences, including rape against four boys, from 1986 to1991. He committed many of his crimes while on bail awaiting trial for other sex offences and used his knowledge of Aboriginal traditions to scare his victims into silence. Glennon was also convicted of abusing 15 children between 1974 and 1991, mostly at youth camps held at Karaglen, a property near Lancefield he helped establish and run. "There were a litany of victims and offences by Glennon that he never, to this day, acknowledged and yet he was a man of the cloth. It's incongruous," Sen-Sgt O'Connor told the Herald Sun. "He was someone children should have been able to trust implicitly and he betrayed that trust in the most awful way." Contact: keith.moor@news.com.au
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