Catholic Archbishop Philip Wilson Fails in Third Attempt to Stop Criminal Proceedings against Him
By Margaret Scheikowski
CATHOLIC Archbishop of Adelaide Philip Wilson has again failed to stop criminal proceedings against him over claims he concealed a colleague’s sexual abuse of a young boy. Wilson is accused of concealing information about the alleged sexual assault of a 10-year-old boy in 1971 by the now-dead paedophile priest James Fletcher in the NSW Hunter region town of Maitland. The NSW Court of Appeal on Tuesday dismissed his third attempt to have the proceedings quashed or permanently stayed. Under the Crimes Act, it’s an offence to fail to give police information when a person knows or believes that someone else has committed “a serious indictable offence”. Prosecutors allege that between 2004 and 2006, Wilson failed to bring material information to police relating to the alleged 1971 indecent assault. The archbishop, who has pleaded not guilty to the charge in the Newcastle Local Court, is the most senior Catholic official worldwide to be charged with such an offence. A magistrate in February 2016 refused to quash or permanently stay the proceedings. In October, in the NSW Supreme Court, Justice Monika Schmidt dismissed the archbishop’s appeal against that decision. His lawyers had argued that the court attendance notice should be quashed because the charge was not valid. “The appellant is being prosecuted for failing to report information to the police (in essence an allegation) some 28 to 30 years after an alleged conversation that took place in 1976,” his lawyer told the Court of Appeal. But justices Tom Bathurst, John Basten and Tony Meagher dismissed his latest application, finding the offence allegedly committed by Fletcher was a “serious indictable offence” and therefore the charge against Wilson was valid.
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