AUSTRALIA
ABC – Lateline
Australian Broadcasting Corporation
Broadcast: 30/05/2014
Reporter: Jason Om
An inquiry into child sexual abuse in NSW has found there’s enough evidence to charge a senior Catholic Church official with concealing the activities of a notorious peadophile.
Transcript
EMMA ALBERICI, PRESENTER: An inquiry into child sexual abuse in the Hunter region of NSW has found there is enough evidence to charge a senior Catholic Church official with concealing the activities of a notorious paedophile priest.
The Special Commission into abuse allegations and their alleged cover-up in the Maitland-Newcastle diocese has delivered its final report calling the failure of clergy to report decades of abuse to police as inexcusable.
But it has also slammed the credibility of the detective chief inspector who sparked the inquiry finding him to be an unsatisfactory and at times untruthful witness.
Inspector Peter Fox had accused senior police of hindering sex abuse investigations but the commission says NSW police acted appropriately.
Jason Om reports.
JASON OM, REPORTER: For the many victims of abuse in the Maitland-Newcastle diocese, there is a sense of vindication.
PETER GOGARTY, ABUSE VICTIM: This was not just the wrongdoing of individual priests that those priests were assisted in their crimes, if you like, by virtue of the fact that other people knew about it and did nothing.
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