Bishop Gave "Fresh Start" to Abuser

CathNews
July 12, 2017

http://cathnews.com/cathnews/29644-documents-reveal-bishop-gave-fresh-start-to-abuser

Fr William Kevin Glover received two warnings under canon law for "immoral and criminal sexual behaviour with boys and adolescents" while in the Marist Fathers - Society of Mary before being sent to Western Australia's Bunbury diocese in 1960.

Fr Glover was removed from a Victorian parish and given his first warning in June 1958 over the systematic sexual abuse of adolescent boys, tendered documents released by the child abuse royal commission reveal.

"In September of that year a Marist priest working in the parish expressed the view that Fr Glover had been involved with as many as 30 boys over a three-year period," a 1994 Marist Fathers incident report to its insurer stated.

Fr Glover was posted to another parish but was removed in July 1959, given another canonical warning and sent to Sydney for treatment at Richmond's St John of God Hospital. He transferred to the Bunbury diocese on a trial basis following an appeal for priests by the bishop, the late Sir Launcelot John Goody, who was archbishop of Perth from 1968 to 1983.

A 2008 Catholic Church Insurances Ltd letter to the Bunbury diocese said it was evident from correspondence that Bishop Goody was aware of Fr Glover's sexual offending.

Bishop Goody told Marist Fathers Provincial James Harcombe in a 1959 letter that Fr Glover had been very frank about his troubles, the tendered documents show.

"I always feel the greatest of sympathy for a priest who has had a fall," Bishop Goody wrote.

"Bunbury is so distant from the eastern states of Australia that I feel that here he would have the opportunity of a fresh start with a completely clean sheet."

Fr Glover, who remained in Bunbury diocese until 1992, died in 1998. Data before the royal commission shows the diocese received five claims alleging child sexual abuse by Fr Glover between 1967 and 1986, and the Marist Fathers one claim over incidents in Victoria in 1956.