Priest snubs judge’s accusations of knowledge

AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald

By JOANNE McCARTHY Jan. 25, 2015

RETIRED Catholic priest Ron Pickin has denied being part of ‘‘an organised criminal activity’’ within the Church in the 1970s and 1980s that protected sadistic predator priest John Denham.

Father Pickin, 81, said Denham was ‘‘a crook’’, but denied knowing he sexually abused boys, denied watching Denham sexually abuse a boy or boys, and said Sydney District Court Judge Helen Syme was wrong to say he was actively or tacitly complicit in those crimes.

‘‘She’s said it wrong,’’ said Father Pickin, the former Wingham priest, army chaplain and Newcastle police chaplain who is confined to a wheelchair in a Hunter aged care facility.

On Friday Judge Syme issued some of the strongest remarks yet heard in a court about Catholic Church knowledge of a child sex offender priest while sentencing Denham, 73, to a total minimum term of 19 years and five months jail for sexually abusing 57 boys aged 5-17 between 1968 and 1986 in the Hunter and Taree.

‘‘The combined set of facts lead to an inescapable conclusion of the active or tacit collusion by at least two other church officers,’’ Judge Syme said before naming Father Pickin and the late Toronto priest and St Pius X Adamstown principal Tom Brennan.

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.