AUSTRALIA
National Catholic Reporter
Aug. 13, 2012
By NCR staff
Three senior church officials in Australia are under investigation for ties to an alleged cover-up of a priest’s sexual assault of young girls, an Australian newspaper has reported.
According to The Sydney Morning Herald, an investigation by New South Wales police has named Fr. Brian Lucas, general secretary of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference, as a person of interest in relation to an alleged concealment of the actions of pedophile priest Denis McAlinden.
Other persons of interest are Archbishop Philip Wilson of Adelaide and retired Bishop Michael Malone of Maitland-Newcastle.
According to multiple news reports, the three allegedly had knowledge of McAlinden’s abuse in 1993, a decade before the church reported the matter to authorities. McAlinden, never facing charges, died in 2005, but two years later the Maitland-Newcastle diocese confirmed that he was a serial child sex offender believed to have targeted hundreds of girls — ages 4 to 12 — for more than four decades.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.