AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald

Catherine Armitage
Senior Writer

A Catholic priest who took steps to inform police about the paedophile priest Denis McAlinden in 1999 has admitted he could have gone to police several years earlier even though the two victims he knew about did not want the police involved, a state government inquiry has heard.

Father William Burston agreed he had known in 1996 that McAlinden had been stripped of his priestly faculties due to concerns he had sexually abused children. A letter he had written to McAlinden that year seeking his co-operation with the diocese’s attempt to ”laicise” or defrock him has been tendered in evidence. But it was not until 1999 that Father Burston wrote to the church’s professional standards office, which handled sexual abuse complaints, suggesting ”intelligence could be given to the police” about McAlinden, the inquiry into alleged church and police cover-ups of…