AUSTRALIA
ABC – Lateline
[with video]
Australian Broadcasting Corporation
Broadcast: 31/07/2013
Reporter: Lucy McNally
A woman hired by the Catholic Church to clean up its approach to paedophile priests has told the inquiry into sexual abuse by clergy in the Hunter Valley that victims were asked to sign documents agreeing not to go to police.
Transcript
TONY JONES, PRESENTER: A woman hired by the Catholic Church to clean up its approach to paedophile priests says victims of clergy abuse were asked to sign a document agreeing not to go to the police as part of the Church’s reconciliation process called Towards Healing. Helen Keevers is one of the last people to give evidence at the New South Wales Government inquiry into the cover-up of sexual abuse in the Maitland-Newcastle Diocese. As part of her role, the trained social worker set up Zimmerman House, a Catholic Church-run centre for sex abuse victims. Lucy McNally reports.
LUCY MCNALLY, REPORTER: Helen Keevers is not a Catholic. She says that meant she had no problem identifying just how bad the Church was when it came to dealing with suspected paedophiles in its ranks.
HELEN KEEVERS, WITNESS: If I can be somewhat flippant, it made me able to see the emperor wasn’t wearing any clothes. It made me able to question structures that – and ways of behaving that people within the Church hadn’t been able to do previously.
LUCY MCNALLY: In 2004, the then Bishop Michael Malone hired her to look at the Church’s so-called bad files, files of priests who’d been the subject of complaints. They included the records of Father Denis McAlinden, one of two paedophiles the inquiry is focused on. The social worker told the commission McAlinden’s file was three to four inches thick.
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