Wagga bishop Gerard Hanna let accused pedophile priest in parish

By Dan Box
Australian
September 14, 2016

https://goo.gl/2cZ1ni

Bishop Gerard Hanna told the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse today that he was the administrator of a parish in Tamworth, northern NSW, when he was told to accept the priest, John Farrell, in 1984.

Farrell, who was jailed in May this year for dozens of child offences, had been moved from another parish after the church received allegations that he had been sexually abusing children.

“The bishop said ‘Oh, you know Gerry, it’s that usual thing. He was messing around with altar boys’,” Bishop Hanna said.

When asked what was meant by “the usual thing”, Bishop Hanna told the commission “It wasn’t unknown ... that there were priests who used altar boys, that they were pedophiles in fact.”

Bishop Hanna accepted Farrell to work as a priest and attempted to place him on restricted duties preventing him from working on children, but could not stop Farrell from visiting at least one family, he told the commission.

“I said to him I’d prefer he didn’t (visit) given the restrictions he was under, but I didn’t enforce it,” he said.

“I’m led to believe that in the three years he was with me he didn’t offend ... It appears he didn’t,” Bishop Hanna told the commission.

In 1987 Farrell was charged by police with sexually assaulting a boy in his former parish, but the case was dismissed by a local court magistrate the following year.

Farrell then returned briefly to the Tamworth parish, and was again permitted to say mass, before Bishop Hanna insisted he step down, the commission heard.

Farrell was allowed to move into the Armidale cathedral and continued to be paid and receive a car allowance from the diocese.

Bishop Hanna, who has led the Wagga Wagga diocese since 2002, announced he was stepping down on Monday, after the Vatican granted his retirement on medical grounds.