BishopAccountability.org

NSW Catholics hired teacher despite abuse

9 News
July 10, 2017

http://www.9news.com.au/national/2017/07/10/17/38/nsw-catholics-hired-teacher-despite-abuse

Catholic education officials were allegedly told of a teacher's conviction for sexually assaulting boys before he was hired and appointed to a NSW school.

In an affidavit tendered to the child abuse royal commission, the teacher, known as GKI, said he admitted in 1974 to former Newcastle director Monsignor Vincent Dilley he'd been dismissed from the public education system over the 1962 conviction.

In a 2005 sworn affidavit, GKI also said he talked to Father Frank Coolahan, who he understood to soon be replacing Monsignor Dilley, and asked him whether he was aware of the conviction and dismissal.

"Yes," GKI recalled Father Coolahan saying in the affidavit made public on Monday.

"Monsignor Dilley said: ' Yes, I am aware of that'."

The affidavit was one of hundreds of documents relating to Catholic Church Insurance's (CCI) knowledge of alleged perpetrators released by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse on Monday.

In a 2005 letter to then-Newcastle-Maitland bishop Michael Malone, CCI employees said they were aware of allegations made against GKI in 1986, 1987 and 1988.

They told the bishop it would be difficult to indemnify the diocese because it had "allegedly employed a known sexual offender to work as a teacher in the Catholic Education system. "

In a 2004 affidavit, a person known as GKA, told of attending a meeting with other people and a parish priest after GKI's arrest.

GKA said the priest, whose name is redacted in the documents, became "agitated and aggressive" when told of the group's concerns.

The parish priest also said he didn't "see what all the fuss is about" and the rumoured behaviour was "par for the course" when he went to boarding school.

"When I suggested that we may seek help for the families outside of the parish, Father (redacted) said, 'if any of you go outside with this I will make you and your families pariahs in this Parish'," GKA, who had heard of GKI "touching" boys in class, said in the affidavit.

Both Coolahan and Dilley are dead.

GKI was arrested in 1988 and subsequently convicted, CCI says in its letter to Bishop Malone.

 




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