Victims suffered as police also faltered

AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald

I HAVE some questions for NSW Police Commissioner Andrew Scipione after the release of the NSW Special Commission of Inquiry final report.

They go to the heart of why a journalist ended up campaigning for a royal commission in 2012, and why police are one of the “existing institutions” that have failed the victims of child sexual abuse in churches and other institutions.

My questions are:

1. If the Newcastle woman known to the inquiry as AL, a victim of paedophile priest Denis McAlinden, had gone on her own to police and asked them to investigate whether senior clergy had concealed McAlinden’s crimes for decades based on church documents she held, what are the chances it would have happened?

2. Is the commissioner prepared to concede AL’s chances would have been zero, and police eventually investigated because it was a journalist, and not a victim of a paedophile priest, who gave them the documents and made it clear she was not going away?

3. On what basis was a senior Hunter police officer describing the “availability” of the Catholic Church’s Towards Healing process as “an alternate to the criminal process” in July 2010, in his internal police report assessing whether police should investigate the McAlinden cover-up?

4. Is the commissioner comfortable that by as late as 2010, and despite victims’ very public condemnation of Towards Healing over a number of years, its “availability” was raised by that senior Hunter police officer as a reason not to investigate whether the church covered up the crimes of McAlinden? And can I remind the commissioner that Denis McAlinden preyed, primarily, on little girls aged between four and 12 over four decades, has victims in at least three countries, and died in 2005 with his “good name” protected by the Catholic Church.

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