AUSTRALIA
Broken Rites
By a Broken Rites researcher (article updated 24 February 2015)
According to police, a senior Catholic priest from western Sydney, Father Richard Cattell, committed sexual crimes against multiple boys in the 1970s and 1980s. Later, in the early 1990s, the Catholic Church promoted this criminal priest to become the Vicar-General of his diocese, supervising dozens of parishes in western Sydney on behalf of the bishop. In 1994, Cattell was jailed regarding one of his victims (from the 1970s). In February 2015 (aged 74) he was jailed again regarding another of his victims (from the 1980s). The February 2015 victim (Broken Rites will call him “Zachary”) submitted a written impact statement to the judge, outlining how the church provided Cattell with easy access to vulnerable children, causing long-term damage to the victim’s later life. This impact statement is included in this Broken Rites article.
Broken Rites has ascertained that Father Richard St John Cattell was ordained on 18 July 1964 for the Sydney archdiocese. He was in the same graduating group as another New South Wales priest, Vincent Kiss, of the Wagga Wagga diocese. (Vincent Kiss was eventually jailed for sexual crimes against children.)
Cattell worked in various parishes (Broken Rites has compiled a list of these) until one victim managed to get Cattell convicted in court in 1994. Since 1994, various Cattell victims have contacted Broken Rites which has advised these victims to have a private chat with NSW Police detectives These victims are from several parishes (and various years) and they do not know each other. In 2014, the New South Wales Office of Public Prosecutors selected one of these victims (“Zachary”) as the case most suitable for laying charges in court.
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.