VIC Priests Talked about "Crazy" Priest

9 News
December 3, 2015

http://www.9news.com.au/national/2015/12/04/03/34/pedophile-priests-destroyed-trust-inquiry

Priests in neighbouring Melbourne parishes would talk about Fr Peter Searson's psychotic behaviour but a cover-up kept his sexual abuse of children secret, a former senior Catholic Church figure says.

You only had to be in the Doveton parish for five minutes and you'd hear about Searson, former Melbourne archdiocese vicar-general Bishop Hilton Deakin says.

Bishop Deakin's friends who were priests in nearby parishes would talk about Searson, the Doveton parish priest from 1984 to 1997.

"They wouldn't stop talking about the craziness of the man," Bishop Deakin told the child abuse royal commission on Friday.

"I can remember being told about refugees from Doveton going over to other parishes because they were appalled at the way in which this man treated parents and children."

But there was no talk about his sexual abuse of children.

"No, in fact there wasn't and this is what surprises me terribly about this, and as a consequence, I almost think, of the cover-up concept, because I never heard about it," Bishop Deakin said.

Bishop Deakin, the 1987-1993 vicar-general, has admitted the culture of the day required covering up abuse.

After confronting Searson about a series of complaints of "very unacceptable priestly behaviour" in 1989, Bishop Deakin came away thinking the priest was the most despicable man he had ever met.

Bishop Deakin said Searson was obnoxious, obdurate, unpleasant and unco-operative, denying most of the allegations.

Searson did admit showing children a body in a coffin - when he told a child he would end up like the dead person if he continued to misbehave - and said it was a bad mistake, Bishop Deakin said.

Bishop Deakin said Cardinal George Pell, then an auxiliary bishop, was attempting to do something about pedophilia in the early 1990s but was "bruised" when he went to the Oakleigh parish where Fr Kevin O'Donnell had abused children.

"He went out to Oakleigh a few times and on occasions he was heavily bruised publicly," Bishop Deakin said.

"The way in which he behaved, or maybe what he said, was not acceptable to a lot of people," he said.

Cardinal Pell, now the Vatican's financial chief, will return from Rome to give evidence from December 16 to the commission's inquiries into abuse in Melbourne and Ballarat.

The Melbourne archdiocese hearing finished on Friday and the Ballarat inquiry resumes in Melbourne on Monday.