Church’s $100,000 Abuse Payout

By Liam Croy and Nick Butterly
West Australian
October 15, 2016

https://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/wa/a/32898516/church-s-100-000-abuse-payout/#page1

The Church has acknowledged former Floreat priest Father Peter McCudden abused Tasmanian woman Wendy Holder when she was visiting relatives in Perth in 1965. She was 13 at the time.

The Church paid Mrs Holder $75,000 in 2003 and offered her another $25,000 this year as a “gesture of goodwill”.

At the time of the 2002 compensation agreement, the Church promised to remove a plaque memorialising McCudden from the wall of his former parish church, St Cecilia’s in Floreat.

But it emerged this week it had simply removed the memorial from the church wall and mounted it metres away on the wall of the parish office.

Father Peter McCudden.

When contacted byThe Weekend West, the Church said it would take the plaque down immediately and destroy it.

It said it agreed with Mrs Holder only to remove the plaque from a “sacred place”.

“In keeping with the agreement with Mrs Holder in 2002, the plaque was to be removed from the sacred place (that is the church and the immediate vicinity),” a spokesman for the Perth archdiocese said.

“This was done and the plaque was moved to the parish office which is not a ‘sacred place’.”

“While not obliged to do so, the archdiocese has taken the view that in order to prevent any further distress to Mrs Holder, to remove the plaque immediately and ultimately destroy (it).”

McCudden died in 1991.

Writing to Mrs Holder in March last year, Archbishop Timothy Costelloe expressed his regret at the abuse she had suffered at the hands of McCudden.

“I am profoundly sorry that you have had to suffer in this way,” Archbishop Costelloe said.

“One of the things you made so clear when we met was the terrible effect of sexual abuse on a person’s faith and their understanding of God.

The plaque at St Cecilia’s.

“This is what makes sexual abuse by clergy, religious or other church workers even more devastating that it would otherwise be.”

Asked whether the Church was investigating other complaints against McCudden, a spokesman said it was unable to comment because of privacy laws.

Mrs Holder said she was shocked to find the Church had kept the plaque.

“I was disgusted that they would keep a memorial purporting that he was a good man,” she said.

“It made me feel that the words from the facilitation were empty, that the Church was more intent on avoiding scandal.

“They were more concerned about not creating a scandal than doing the right thing.”

McCudden, an Irish migrant, was the director of music at St Mary’s Cathedral before he was appointed inaugural parish priest at St Cecilia’s in 1960.