AUSTRALIA
The Daily Telegraph
Andrew Clennell and Clementine Cuneo
The Daily Telegraph
May 02, 2012
ATTORNEY-General Greg Smith told charity worker Father Chris Riley an alleged paedophile priest’s child abuse victim was making allegations because she was “trying to get $1 million”, Father Riley said yesterday.
Father Finian Egan, a close friend of Mr Smith who he mentioned in his maiden speech speech in 2007, saying “at St Gerard’s Father Finian Egan charmed us with his Irish wit and his pastoral devotion to his flock”, was charged yesterday with rape and other sexual assault offences relating to four minors dating back 40 years.
Youth worker Father Riley wrote in an email to one of Father Egan’s alleged victims, Nikki Wells, on July 17 last year, that: “I was with Greg Smith the other day and I raised you (sic) case with him. He commented that ‘you were just trying to get $1m from the church’.”
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