AUSTRALIA
Maitland Mercury
By ELLE WATSON July 15, 2013
The former head of the Maitland-Newcastle Catholic Diocese Bishop Michael Malone said after several years trying to defend the church against sexual abuse allegations he chose to put its victims first.
Bishop Malone told the special commission of inquiry he had to decide between protecting the offending priests or their victims.
“I couldn’t sit on the fence anymore,” he said.
In the years following his appointment as bishop in 1995 he said he struggled to come to terms with the multiple complaints of sexual abuse and he got “caught up in the ethos of the church”.
He said that having been a priest for nearly 50 years and a bishop for 20, he developed a tendency to “defend the organisation which you belong”.
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