AUSTRALIA
The Age
February 25, 2016
Chris Johnston
The Christian Brothers hired a private investigator in 1995 to “dig up dirt” on victims of a notorious paedophile priest in Ballarat.
The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse was told today the private investigator, Glynis McNeight, of Ballarat, visited two victims of Brother Ted Dowlan at home just before Dowlan was charged by police for historical sex crimes against boys.
Ted Dowlan.
The object of the exercise, the commission heard, was for the Christian Brothers’ legal team – from a small firm in Ocean Grove – to find out what kind of witnesses the victims would be in court and whether, according to counsel assisting the commission Stephen Free, they would be “easily torn apart in the witness box”.
One victim Ms McNeight visited ended up crying and agitated and she reported to the law firm – which was being paid by the Christian Brothers – that the victim was “nervous” and “excitable” and was prone to tears and bad language. He would have “no credibility” as a witness, she wrote.
The investigator, who called herself an “inquiry agent”, asked Victoria Police for details of the victims but police refused. A policeman involved in the investigation warned her that she could pervert the course of justice.
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