AUSTRALIA
The Australian
CLAIRE HARVEY AND BARCLAY CRAWFORD
From:The Sunday Telegraph
November 11, 2012
THE Catholic Church is not sheltering paedophiles – and Cardinal George Pell says he’s confident a Commission of Inquiry into sex abuse claims won’t expose any ongoing offending by priests.
Cardinal Pell has instead fired back at Detective Chief Inspector Peter Fox, who investigated claims of sexual abuse in the Hunter Region, accusing him of “smearing” him with the allegation the church obstructed sex abuse claims against priests.
Although Australia’s most senior Catholic cleric admitted the church had “started from well behind scratch” on the issue of child sex abuse, he said major reforms since the mid-1990s had stamped out the culture of secrecy.
“We have very good procedures in place. There is wide public awareness of this problem and within the Catholic community, teachers and children to some extent have been alerted against it,” he said.
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