AUSTRALIA
The Australian
DAN BOX THE AUSTRALIAN MARCH 22, 2014
A TEENAGER who told the dean of Sydney’s St Mary’s Cathedral he had been sexually abused was allegedly “humiliated” by the Catholic cleric, who had “a complaint file as big as the New Testament”, church lawyers have said.
No record was kept of this 1983 complaint, which came to light 20 years later while the Archdiocese of Sydney was fighting a separate child abuse case, according to documents tendered to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.
The church continued to defend itself in court, the commission heard, even after learning this second victim was abused by the same Sydney priest, Father Aidan Duggan.
“This fresh allegation would suggest that the archdiocese … was on notice of Duggan’s predeliction for young men and did nothing to stop it,” lawyer Paul McCann wrote in a July 2005 letter to the church’s insurers.
“Unfortunately the priest to whom the complaint was made, Father Michael McGloin, also appears to have antecedents for boundary violations and child sexual abuse. It’s unlikely therefore that Father Michael McGloin will be putting on an affidavit in this matter.”
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