AUSTRALIA
ABC News
The Catholic Church drafted a Memorandum of Understanding to share information with the NSW Police Force in 2004 despite being told a year earlier that the agreement breached child abuse mandatory reporting laws, an inquiry has heard.
The Police Integrity Commission had previously heard the MOU was designed to open up lines of communication between the church’s Professional Standards Office and the Child Protection Enforcement Agency, to facilitate the sharing of information relating to allegations of child sexual abuse by members of the clergy.
But a 2003 letter from Commander Kim McKay from the Child Protection Squad to Michael McDonald, who was the head of the Catholic Commission for Employment Relations, advised that the unsigned MOU breached section 316 of the Crimes Act.
In the letter, Ms McKay said “the draft MOU has not been approved by the NSW Police Service, and the arrangements proposed by the MOU are not currently in place”.
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