AUSTRALIA
ABC News
By William Rollo and Marlina Whop
The retired Rockhampton bishop allowed a priest to stay on at a parish even though he knew he was a paedophile, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has heard.
Bishop Brian Heenan also admitted at one point he tried to protect the reputation of the Catholic Church rather than consider the victims of sexual abuse.
Bishop Heenan was cross-examined over the Church’s responses to the abuse allegations at St Joseph’s Orphanage at Neerkol, west of Rockhampton, from the 1940s to the 1970s.
He allowed one of the main offenders, Father Reg Durham, to continue working for the Catholic Church for three years despite a woman alleging in 1994 he sexually abused her since she was a child.
Father Durham was the administrator for the parish of Neerkol and had resided in the presbytery.
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