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…