AUSTRALIA
Broken Rites

By a Broken Rites researcher

One of Australia’s most prolific child-abuse criminals, Father Kevin O’Donnell, was protected in the Melbourne Catholic archdiocese for fifty years. In his final years, he even received public praise from one of his superiors, Auxiliary Bishop George Pell.

O’Donnell is dead but his numerous victims — and their families — still bear the scars of his crimes.

Father Kevin O’Donnell was a child abuser from 1942 to 1992. He fitted Masses, weddings and funerals in between his sex-abuse activities.

The Catholic Church now admits that O’Donnell was a child-abuser from day one. Broken Rites has seen a typed transcript of an interview that Mr Peter O’Callaghan QC (sex-abuse commissioner for the Melbourne archdiocese) had with an O’Donnell victim on 23 March 2003. In the transcript, Mr O’Callaghan commented that O’Donnell was engaged in sex abuse from the time he was ordained…