AUSTRALIA
Canberra Times
[Church funding paedophiles’ legal defence]
November 17, 2012
Rick Feneley, Paul Bibby, Barney Zwartz, Jane Lee, Daniel Lane
Members of the small parish were furious. Word had gone around that money from the Christmas collection had been used to help pay the legal costs of a local priest accused of repeatedly raping an altar boy. It was December 2004. Father James Patrick Fletcher, 64, had just been found guilty of multiple counts of anal and oral penetration of ”Desmond”, who was 13 when the attacks had started in 1990 in the Maitland-Newcastle diocese. Fletcher would die one year into his 10-year maximum jail sentence.
But The Newcastle Herald soon began to question how his defence had been financed. According to the victim support group Broken Rites, legal experts had estimated his costs for the 11-day trial, including for the services of a prominent QC, exceeded $200,000. The Bishop of Maitland-Newcastle, the Most Reverend Michael Malone, said Fletcher had made use of a ”loan facility”. He also admitted that one local priest had ”donated” part of the parish’s Christmas collection to help pay Fletcher’s lawyers. Not that this priest had told his parishioners or sought their permission. It was the secrecy that really angered the faithful.
As Fairfax Media revealed on Friday, at least two Catholic orders – the Christian Brothers and Marist Fathers – have continued to fund the legal defences of clergy as they went to trial for the second, third and even fourth times for the sexual abuse of children. It is the perception that churches have shielded their own – and that even police have turned a blind eye – that largely motivated the Prime Minister this week to announce the biggest inquiry into child abuse in Australia’s history.
Only on Tuesday, the Archbishop of Sydney, George Pell, stressed that his archdiocese did not pay for the defence of clergy accused of child abuse. But as Pell also made clear, he is not the boss of the Catholic Church in Australia. He is the nation’s only cardinal, making him Australia’s most influential Catholic. It gives him moral authority to speak out. But different orders have their own authority.
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.