AUSTRALIA
Daily Examiner
Adam Davies 22nd Feb 2014
A CATHOLIC school principal has told an inquiry there was a mentality and culture operating in the Toowoomba Diocese that the bishop must be protected at all costs.
Dan McMahon, the current principal of Shalom College in Bundaberg, told the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in Brisbane on Friday that student protection did not come first.
“The phrase not to compromise the bishop was used regularly,” he said.
“It was a justification for diocesan processes on all sorts of things.
“When I, as a principal, would sometimes think or ask why do we have to go through so many hurdles to do something or to make a decision, often the reason was we did not want to compromise the bishop because he is the ultimate employer.
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