AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald
JOANNE MCCARTHY
22 Jul 2016
THE Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse will hold a public hearing into the Catholic Church in the Hunter almost immediately after an Anglican Church public hearing in Newcastle from August 2.
Back-to-back hearings will confirm the Hunter as Australia’s epicentre of institutional child sex abuse only three years after a NSW Special Commission of Inquiry exposed shocking systemic protection of paedophile priests within the Catholic Maitland-Newcastle diocese over decades.
A date and details for the Hunter Catholic public hearing – the 43rd to be held by the royal commission since 2013 – are expected to be released in the next week on the eve of a proposed two-week Anglican hearing at Newcastle Courthouse from August 2.
The Hunter Catholic hearing is expected to start in late August before the 44th public hearing into Armidale priest John Farrell starts in Sydney on September 12.
News of the back-to-back hearings comes after more shocking revelations about senior Hunter Anglicans failing to stop known paedophile priests including Peter Rushton and James Brown, and a backlash against Bishop Greg Thompson and senior diocesan officers that has included death threats for challenging the “mates” culture of abuse.
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