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Church 'failed to recognise pedophiles'

Sky News
November 30, 2015

http://www.skynews.com.au/news/national/2015/11/30/church--failed-to-recognise-pedophiles-.html


A paralysis extending from the Melbourne archbishop led to the Catholic Church failing to recognise the pedophiles in its midst, the current archbishop says.

Melbourne Archbishop Denis Hart lays the blame firmly on former archbishop Frank Little but not on his immediate predecessor Cardinal George Pell.

'What is now apparent to me is that there was knowledge and a failure to act,' Archbishop Hart told the child abuse royal commission.

'I have just been totally appalled by the extent and the depravity of the offenders and the suffering and ruination of lives of the survivors.'

Archbishop Hart said a paralysis in the office of the archbishop was partly to blame.

'There was such a respect that only the archbishop could act, that this introduced a paralysis.'

Archbishop Little had such a high ideal of the priesthood that he did not want to have a priest being forced out on his conscience, Archbishop Hart said.

Senior counsel assisting the commission Gail Furness SC asked if the late archbishop was happy to have it on his conscience that children were abused because he did not act.

'I don't know that that was his intention but I accept the assertion,' Archbishop Hart said.

'Archbishop Little didn't like confrontation and therefore the thought of forcing a man out from an appointment, might force him to leave the priesthood, that he found terribly distasteful.'

More than 330 people have complained to the church since 1980 about being sexually abused as children by 84 priests in the Melbourne archdiocese.

Archbishop Little failed to act on numerous complaints about Fr Peter Searson, whose 'mad, psychotic' behaviour included showing a body in a coffin to children.

'The archbishop didn't act and this placed children in danger,' Archbishop Hart said.

Searson was one of a succession of pedophile priests sent to the disadvantaged Doveton parish in Melbourne's south from the 1970s to 1990s.

'It's just a horror story,' Archbishop Hart said.

'The whole story of Doveton is lamentable and that nothing was done is worse.'

Archbishop Hart blamed the failures on Archbishop Little, Melbourne's archbishop from 1974 to 1996, and his second-in-charge, vicars-general Gerald Cudmore, Hilton Deakin and Peter Connors.

He excluded Cardinal Pell, who was Archbishop from 1996 to 2001 and introduced the Melbourne Response complaints process.

Ms Furness questioned whether the complete failure of process in Doveton included Cardinal Pell, an auxiliary bishop for Melbourne's southern region from 1987 to 1996.

'I would have expected him to have an adequate degree of knowledge; whether he knew all these awful things, which make me feel ashamed, I'm not sure,' Archbishop Hart said on Monday.

'He'd have to explain what he did and didn't know, but there was a complete failure of process.'

Archbishop Hart said it was an inadvertent omission that his commission statement did not refer to a 1989 teachers delegation approaching Cardinal Pell about Searson.

'I have no brief for playing down the evil of this situation. It just went on and on and on and people were placed in great danger.'

Cardinal Pell returns from Rome to give evidence on December 16.




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