AUSTRALIA
Central Queensland News
Jessica Grewal 24th May 2014
SENIOR members of the Lismore Catholic Diocese had the chance to publicly shame a predator priest and strip him of his title, more than a decade before he died, the royal commission has heard.
In her final submission to the inquiry into the Church’s response to Lismore victim Jennifer Ingham, Senior Counsel Gail Furness said it was open to the panel to find the Diocese could have called on the Holy See to dismiss alcoholic child abuser Rex Brown.
She said the application should have been made from the time Brown, who died in 2005, was convicted of child porn offences in 1996.
She also asked the commission to reject the evidence of former Lismore parish priest Father Frank Mulcahy, who denied he was told of Ms Ingham’s abuse as far back as 1990 and did not know her at the time.
Ms Ingham had previously told the commission she had been abused by Father Brown, a former Lismore and Tweed Heads priest, from the time she was 16 until early adulthood.
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