AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald
By JOANNE McCARTHY Feb. 21, 2014
A RECENT Vatican decree that used character assassination of alleged victims to dismiss a case against a former Hunter Catholic priest proved the Church’s attitude to child sexual abuse had not changed, a child protection officer said.
‘‘How wrong can they get it?’’ said former Maitland-Newcastle diocese child protection officer Helen Keevers after a decree, issued in December, examined allegations about a former Hunter priest by ‘‘testing the reliability and credibility’’ of two men who made complaints.
The decree, by Cardinal Levada of the Vatican’s Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith and issued after a process overseen by Cardinal George Pell, showed canon law ‘‘comes from the point of protecting the ‘good name’ of the priest, with absolutely no regard for assessing the risk to children’’, Ms Keevers said.
‘‘This is a very significant document and a key document for the Royal Commission [into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse]. I think there’s no better example available to demonstrate the modern Church can’t deal with these matters fairly.
‘‘They use evidence and twist it to say [the priest] is innocent, when it could just as easily be seen as evidence of his guilt,’’ Ms Keevers said.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.