AUSTRALIA
Otago Daily Times
Wed, 8 May 2013
Catholic Church officials and clergy, not police, obstructed investigations into allegations of child sexual abuse by NSW priests, a special state government commission of inquiry has been told.
The evidence given by state MP for Dubbo and former police officer Troy Grant contradicts the account of the man at the centre of the inquiry, Detective Chief Inspector Peter Fox.
Mr Grant, who as a policeman investigated sex abuse in 1995, denied he had told Insp Fox there was a “Catholic mafia” within the police force that hindered investigations into the Hunter Valley allegations.
Commissioner Margaret Cunneen today began hearing the third day of evidence in Newcastle into allegations of sexual abuse by Catholic clergy in the Hunter, including assertions by Insp Fox of a cover-up by the church and that senior police had ordered him to stop his investigations.
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