AUSTRALIA
ABC News
[with audio and video]
By Suzanne Smith
A senior serving police officer has challenged New South Wales Premier Barry O’Farrell to set up a Royal Commission into sex abuse in the Catholic Church, alleging the Church hierarchy covers up for paedophile priests, silences investigations, and destroys crucial evidence to avoid prosecutions.
Detective Chief Inspector Peter Fox has spent more than 30 years as an investigator and has been at the centre of major police operations in the Newcastle-Hunter region of New South Wales.
He has written a letter to Mr O’Farrell, published in the Newcastle Herald, calling for a Royal Commission into child sex abuse within the Catholic Church.
Mirroring police evidence given to the Victorian inquiry into the Catholic Church launched this year, he says in his letter: “Many police are frustrated by this sinister behaviour which will continue until someone stops it.”
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