Child-sex Cleric Told Leading Priests about His Abuse of Boys

By Dan Box
The Australian
September 12, 2016

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A pedophile priest allegedly told two of the Catholic Church’s most influential clerics he sexually abused five young boys, but was not defrocked for more than a decade, a royal commission heard yesterday.

The priest, John Farrell, was jailed earlier this year, 24 years after the meeting took place and 32 years after the church received reports of him abusing children.

Lawyers for the NSW government yesterday sought to have the evidence of the two clerics, Brian Lucas and John Usher, suppressed to protect possible future court proceedings.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse heard the pair were “the architects of the church’s ­response” to child sex abuse by priests, and became among the most influential clerics in Australia. Father Lucas “became the person bishops and congregational leaders would call when a complaint or problem relating to sexual abuse surfaced”, counsel assisting the commission, Gail Furness SC, said.

His “job was, as he described it, to help the bishop or major superior manage the person who was making the complaint and ... get the man out of the business”.