AUSTRALIA
ABC News
By Dan Cox
A former advisor to the Catholic bishop in the New South Wales Hunter Valley has rejected claims he has “selective recall” regarding paedophile priests.
At the New South Wales Special Commission today Father William Burston used the phrase “I don’t recall” more than 60 times.
He is giving evidence at the inquiry into claims the church covered-up abuse to protect two paedophile priests, James Fletcher and Denis McAlinden.
As the Maitland-Newcastle vicar general from the mid 1990s he was second in charge of the diocese.
But he says he cannot remember when he was told, where he was told or who told him about McAlinden’s abuse of young girls.
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