AUSTRALIA
Broken Rites
By a Broken Rites researcher (article posted 5 March 2014)
Until 1994, Father Richard Cattell was a senior Catholic priest in western Sydney. A boy told Cattell about having been sexually assaulted by a Catholic lay teacher, but (according to police evidence in court) Father Cattell then committed a similar crime on this boy. This 1994 court case, researched by Broken Rites, demonstrates that church victims should report sexual crimes to the civil authorities — not to the offending organisation, the church.
Richard St John Cattell was ordained as a Catholic priest on 18 July 1964 for the Sydney diocese. He was in the same graduating group as another New South Wales priest, Vincent Kiss, of the Wagga Wagga diocese. (Vincent Kiss was eventually jailed.)
Broken Rites has ascertained that some of Cattell’s early parishes in the Sydney diocese (this might not be a complete list) were: Concord West and Lakemba in the 1960s; and Liverpool and Windsor in the 1970s.
A church website has stated that, from 1982 to 1991, Cattell was the parish priest in charge of the “Our Lady of the Rosary” parish in the outer-western Sydney suburb of St Marys, near Penrith. The “Our Lady of the Rosary Parish” includes the suburbs of Claremont Meadows, Colyton, Oxley Park, St Mary’s and Werrington.
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