AUSTRALIA
7 News

BY JOEL CRESSWELL –
November 12, 2013

Melbourne’s Catholic archdiocese actively protected a pedophile priest by moving him to a different parish, where he continued to abuse a boy, a judge says.

Russell Robert Walker, 64, was a parish priest when he repeatedly abused two altar boys in the 1970s, despite Melbourne’s then-archbishop Frank Little being warned by one victim’s mother.

Jailing Walker for five years on Tuesday, Victorian County Court Judge Felicity Hampel said the church’s response to the warning was scandalous.

“Although you’re not to be punished for the institutional response, what happened was scandalous,” she said.