AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald
By JASON GORDON May 6, 2013
DETECTIVE Chief Inspector Peter Fox was ‘‘uneasy’’.
His office had been raided while he was on leave, he and other police had been pulled off investigations into the alleged cover-up of child sex abuse, and a colleague had told him about the ‘‘Catholic Mafia’’ that existed within Newcastle’s police ranks.
‘‘I just didn’t trust other police,’’ he said.
Mr Fox spent most of yesterday in the witness box as the first day of inquiries into police handling of child sexual abuse allegations within the Maitland-Newcastle Catholic Diocese got under way.
The inquiry, headed by Commissioner Margaret Cunneen, heard a series of stunning allegations from Mr Fox including suggestions that a ‘‘Catholic Mafia’’ was behind a grand scheme of collusion, and that police chose not to charge former Catholic Bishop Michael Malone with hindering police investigations into paedophile priests.
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