AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald
A PREVIOUSLY unreleased NSW Ombudsman’s report says Bishop Michael Malone failed to appropriately manage child abuse allegations against paedophile priest Jim Fletcher.
The 2004 report was triggered by a March 2003 complaint by whistleblowing police officer Peter Fox and has been referred to repeatedly at the Special Commission of Inquiry in Newcastle.
Short sections were tendered to the inquiry late yesterday and made public.
They show the ombudsman investigated the Catholic Commission for Employment Relations, which was responsible for handling Church child abuse allegations from 1999.
The ombudsman made a number of “findings and adverse comments”, although the detail was left off the version made public.
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