AUSTRALIA
Broken Rites
By a Broken Rites researcher (article updated 15 January 2016)
Research by Broken Rites has demonstrated how Catholic Church leaders kept quiet about a certain Australian priest, “Father F” (from Moree and Armidale in northern New South Wales), for THIRTY years. And in 2002, after George Pell became the new archbishop of Sydney, he too learned about Father F. The matter of Father F was finally revealed by Broken Rites and the media (not by the church) in 2012. Broken Rites (but not the church leaders) advised the victims to contact the Sex Crime Squad detectives of the NSW Police. The church leaders now need to explain why they remained silent for so long.
According to a church document, Father F admitted to church authorities in 1992 that, during the previous ten years, he had committed sexual offences against altar boys. These boys were 10 and 11 years old at the time of the offences. The church document quoted Father F as admitting that he began doing these things to the boys in his very first parish in the early 1980s.
According to this 1992 document, the church authorities feared that “one or some of the boys involved may bring criminal charges against [Father F] with subsequent grave harm to the priesthood and the Church.”
That is, according to this document, the church’s priority was to protect the church’s public image, rather than to protect the children. Indeed, the document made no mention of the welfare of the children. Thus, the church authorities did not help Father F’s former altar boys to consult the state’s child-protection police about Father F’s actions. So the church’s public image was protected — until 2012, when the media revealed the church’s “Father F” cover-up.
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