AUSTRALIA
Maitland Mercury
By ELLE WATSON July 2, 2013
Senior church officials knew Denis McAlinden abused an 11-year-old girl in 1953 and still allowed the priest to move between Hunter parishes where he continued to sexually abuse children over four decades, a sex abuse inquiry has heard.
The shocking facts were recounted by counsel assisting – Julia Lonergan SC – who told the special commission of inquiry, internal church correspondence showed clergy members had “extensive knowledge dating back to the 1950s of the serious risk to children posed by McAlinden”.
Part two of the inquiry, which began yesterday, will for the next three weeks examine whether church officials hindered police investigations into paedophilia by failing to report offences, discouraging witnesses from coming forward, alerting offenders about possible police action and destroying evidence.
One of the men who knew of the priest’s paedophilia, Monsignor Patrick Cotter, extracted a confession from McAlinden in 1976 after he sexually abused a primary school student in Forster.
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