AUSTRALIA
The Age
[with video]
July 1, 2013
Catherine Armitage
The Catholic Church had “extensive knowledge dating back to the 1950s” of the sexual abuse of children by the paedophile priest Denis McAlinden which continued over four decades on children as young as four and five, an inquiry has heard.
One boy who was abused by McAlinden between the ages of five and nine at Singleton was required to do penance after he told his parish priest, “apparently for his sin in being abused”, the inquiry into an alleged cover-up of child sexual abuse in the Catholic church in the NSW Hunter region has been told.
In 1975 there were further allegations of abuse by McAlinden against primary school children in the Forster area.
A meeting of church officials on May 16 1976 recommended he be given permission to seek work in the Geraldton diocese in Western Australia.
A “very significant” letter the following day from one of the church officials, Vicar Capitular Monsignor Cotter, to then Bishop Clarke said the allegations against McAlinden were “not extremely serious”.
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