AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald
Royal Commission: Priest referred to Vatican with ‘no expectation’ of when church might hear back
December 16, 2013
Catherine Armitage
Senior Writer
A Lismore Catholic priest has been referred for action to the Vatican after telling people he knew of a place in Thailand “where under age people were available to foreign visitors”, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has heard.
Since a 2001 directive from Pope John Paul II, bishops have been required to report “substantiated” allegations regarding sex abuse of children by priests to the Vatican if the priest is still alive, Bishop Geoffrey Jarrett of the Catholic Church’s Lismore diocese testified.
He said he had referred a case in 2011 or 2012 and was awaiting instructions on what to do from Rome. But he said he had “no expectation” of when he might hear back. Because there have been “so many of these matters referred from all over the world”, Rome “can’t move very quickly for all of these matters”, he said.
Bishop Jarrett was giving evidence in the case of Jennifer Ingham, who was abused for four years by a priest of his diocese, Paul Rex Brown, from when she was 16 in 1978.
Bishop Jarrett agreed it was a serious problem that child abusers have been moved from one diocese to another within the church. Asked what checks he would do if he were asked to accept a priest from another diocese into his own, he said he would do the “checks required by civil legislation”, that is, Working with Children checks.
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