Tony Whitlam Sues ABC over 7.30 ‘cover-up’

The Australian
September 21, 2016

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Former Federal Court judge Tony Whitlam QC has accused the ABC of portraying him as a “stooge” of the Catholic Church who helped cover up for John Farrell, a notorious pedophile priest whose crimes are under scrutiny by the royal commission into child sexual abuse.

Mr Whitlam, a son of Gough Whitlam, has launched a defam­ation suit against the ABC over an item on its 7.30 program on May 2, the day Farrell was sentenced to at least 18 years’ jail for 62 child-sex offences.

In a statement of claim filed with the Federal Court last month, Mr Whitlam attacked the ABC over its reporting of an inquiry into Farrell that he did for the bishops of Armidale and Parramatta after a Four Corners expose in 2012.

The royal commission has spent seven days investigating the reign of terror in the 1980s and early 1990s for which Farrell was jailed and the way the church dealt with his offending.

Counsel assisting Gail Furness SC has told the commission Mr Whitlam in his report “said there was no ‘cover-up’ in 1992”.

In his claim, Mr Whitlam says the 7.30 piece painted him as someone who committed a serious criminal offence by concealing Farrell’s sexual abuse of children. He claims the program falsely portrayed him as deliberately concealing the crimes, “enabling Farrell to abuse even more children”. It also allegedly depicted him as conducting a “sham” inquiry and as “a stooge who took money from the Catholic Church to carry out a rigged inves­t­igation into a Catholic priest”.

A transcript of the broadcast, filed by Mr Whitlam, quotes Bernard Barrett, of victims’ rights group Broken Rites, saying “the Tony Whitlam report doesn’t look good now in view of what’s happened to Farrell in the court”.

However, Mr Whitlam ­seems more aggrieved by a ­moment in the broadcast when Mr Barrett, who is not a target of the lawsuit, made air quotation marks — a “mocking, derisive and sensational gesture” — while discussing the investigation. Mr Whitlam claims this, along with other factors including the ABC’s “arrogant and highhanded refusal to apologise”, entitles him to aggravated damages.

Underlying the dispute, and probed yesterday at the royal commission, is what happened at a meeting between Farrell and three priests on September 3, 2002. Two of the priests, Brian Lucas and John Usher, did not recall Farrell admitting to having had oral sex with young boys.

However, the commission has heard that the third priest, Wayne Peters, wrote a letter at the time that referred to the admissions and formed part of the Four Cornersbroadcast in 2012.

In his report, Mr Whitlam found “nothing sinister” about the two priests not recalling any admissions and said Father ­Peters’s letter was not necessarily “a more accurate record”.

In evidence at the commission yesterday, Father Usher said he “didn’t believe the letter”.

Mr Whitlam’s lawsuit is set down for a case management conference on October 10.

He and his solicitor, Mark O’Brien, did not respond to calls and emails. An ABC spokesman declined to comment.