AUSTRALIA
Perth Now
MICHAEL MADIGAN THE COURIER-MAIL APRIL 17, 2015
A RETIRED senior Queensland cleric has admitted the Catholic Church failed victims of sexual abuse in the Rockhampton diocese.
Bishop Brian Heenan made significant admissions during a day on the witness stand at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses into Child Sexual Abuse in Rockhampton.
Bishop Heenan, in charge of the diocese during the ’90s as the scandal erupted, admitted he put the Catholic Church’s reputation before his duty to listen to victims — including those abused at the notorious Neerkol orphanage.
He admitted to Counsel Assisting Sophie David, SC, that he allowed pedophile priest Reg Durham to continue working with children when he knew he had sexually abused a child.
Bishop Heenan also accepted a proposition at the core of the Commission’s terms of reference: that the Church failed to respond adequately to abuse charges.
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