AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald
By GABRIEL WINGATE-PEARSE Oct. 3, 2014
THE relationship between the Catholic Church and NSW Police is being investigated once more, this time by the Police Integrity Commission.
Operation Protea, announced yesterday, will look specifically at police involvement in any “agreement, protocol or memorandum of understanding” between police and the Catholic Church concerning the handling of complaints of abuse by Catholic Church personnel or employees.
The investigation follows the release of internal police documents to Greens MP David Shoebridge under freedom-of-information legislation in October 2013.
As the Newcastle Herald reported at the time, the documents include an unsigned memorandum of understanding allowing the Church to produce edited abuse reports, carry out investigations and decline to release the results to police without court orders.
When a senior NSW Police officer advised the Church in August 2003 that the memorandum of understanding appeared to be “in direct conflict” with legal requirements to report crime, police did not investigate whether the Church had failed to report abuse cases.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.