AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald
Linton Besser, Joanne McCarthy
August 01, 2012
PRECISELY six months after the paedophile priest Denis McAlinden was reprimanded but not reported by the church over allegations of child sex abuse, Father Brian Lucas told the Wood Royal Commission that ”to engage in a cover-up … is the very worst way of approaching it”.
Now Father Lucas, the general secretary of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference, is one of three senior Catholic officials being investigated by police detectives over the concealment of McAlinden’s offences in the 1990s.
Strike Force Lantle is due to deliver a brief of evidence to prosecutors in the next few weeks.
Between 1993 and 1995, Father Lucas, the former bishop of Maitland-Newcastle Michael Malone and Father Philip Wilson, now an archbishop, had roles in an attempted defrocking of McAlinden over the sexual abuse of young girls but failed to report him to authorities.
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