Police wrongly said priest didn't offend when he abused girl during confession

The Guardian
December 01, 2015

http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/dec/02/police-wrongly-said-priest-didnt-offend-when-he-abused-girl-during-confession

Julie Stewart has told the royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse that Melbourne priest Father Peter Searson indecently assaulted her during confession in 1985.

Police wrongly decided a Melbourne priest had committed no crime when he indecently assaulted a 10-year-old girl during confession, an inquiry has heard.

Victoria police Assistant Commissioner Stephen Fontana said he disagreed with the 1990 conclusion there were “nil offences disclosed”.

“I’m of the view that there certainly was an indecent assault that was committed and it should have proceeded further,” he told the royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse.

Julie Stewart has told the inquiry Doveton parish priest Fr Peter Searson indecently assaulted her during confession in 1985.

The 1990 police report said: “All Searson has done is sit the child on his knee and get the child to kiss him on the cheek.

“Stewart stated that when she sat on his knee he dragged her up and on to his lap where she felt his erect penis rubbing on her back.”

Stewart has given evidence that when she told an officer she had also been abused by someone else as a child, he said: “Oh my God, what were you wearing, a neon sign above your head saying ‘come and get me’?”

Fontana said the probationary constable did not recall the interview. “He was mortified when he heard that, but he just doesn’t believe he would have said it.”

Fontana said the officer was deeply sorry if he said anything that upset Stewart. She accepted the apology.

Searson has also been accused of telling a woman who wanted to convert to Catholicism to get married that she had to first sleep with him, while he was chaplain at the Villa Maria Society for the Blind in 1974.

“Fr Searson, who was given that task of attending to her baptism and conversion, told her that she needed to have sexual intercourse with him, which she did,” counsel assisting the commission Stephen Free said on Wednesday.

The woman and her husband complained to then Melbourne archbishop Frank Little in 1975 and made a rape accusation to police in 1997, but Searson was not interviewed.

Searson’s priestly faculties were removed in 1998 after he admitted hitting an altar boy.

Searson, who died in 2009, was never convicted of a sex offence but four people have made child sex abuse claims against him to the Melbourne archdiocese.

Twenty people made claims that another Melbourne priest, Fr Nazareno Fasciale, abused them between 1953 and 1985.

Complaints were made to police in 1994 and a brief sent to the Office of Public Prosecutions in March 1995 for advice, but Fasciale was not charged before he died in March 1996.

Fontana said the delay in processing the complaints and deciding whether to charge Fasciale was excessive.

Police also received separate complaints about Fasciale during that time but those officers did not know about the existing complaints, the inquiry heard.