AUSTRALIA
Eureka Street
Tim Wallace | 02 April 2014
In late 2004, two years into the Catholic Archdiocese of Sydney’s botched handling of a sexual abuse complaint against priest Aidan Duggan, the executive director of the Catholic Church’s National Committee for Professional Standards, Julian McDonald, did something extraordinary. He inquired into whether Duggan, prior to joining the Sydney Archdiocese in 1974, had form.
This would not have been within McDonald’s usual ambit, but Duggan’s accuser, John Ellis, had requested the NCPS review the archdiocese’s handling of his case — a process stymied early on the basis the archdiocese had no record of other allegations against Duggan, deemed too senile to answer the allegations.
In October 2004, McDonald emailed the Child Protection Office of the Catholic Church in Ireland. A month later he emailed John Mone, the recently retired bishop of Paisley in Scotland. Then, in mid-January 2005, he emailed the director of St Margaret’s Children and Family Care Society, a voluntary adoption agency in Glasgow.
He asked that records be checked for any allegations against Duggan, ‘who was born in Scotland and became a Cistercian monk, ministering in Scotland for some years before leaving the Cistercians and coming to Australia where he was incardinated into the Archdiocese of Sydney’.
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