AUSTRALIA
Broken Rites
By a Broken Rites Australia researcher (posted 1 July 2014)
An Australian jury has convicted a priest (Father James Henry Scannell, 88) on a charge of buggery, committed against a 12-year-old boy more than 40 years ago. After the assault, the priest required the boy to take part in Confession and ordered him not to tell anybody about the assault, the court was told. The victim (now in his fifties) finally reported this crime to police after learning that his aunt’s funeral in 2010 was to be conducted by this priest, the court was told.
A jury returned its guilty verdict in the Melbourne County Court on 1 July 2014. Father Scannell is listed in the 2013 edition of the official Australian Catholic Directory as a “Supplementary Priest” of the Melbourne archdiocese, which is the largest diocese in Australia. Supplementary priests are no longer in charge of a parish, but they are available for relieving other priests or for conducting weddings or funerals. Father Scannell has the letters “PE” (pastor emeritus) after his name, which means that the Melbourne archdiocese had awarded him the honour of being a distinguished priest.
In the early 1970s, according to court documents, Father Scannell was stationed at St Anne’s parish in East Kew, a leafy Melbourne suburb, where the 12-year-old served as an altar boy. The boy attended the parish with his aunt.
Father Scannell (date of birth 17 April 1926) assaulted the boy at the priest’s parish house between August 1970 and July 1972 when the boy was aged between 11 and 13.
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