AUSTRALIA
Australian Broadcasting Corporation
June 19, 2018
By Nancy Notzon
Catholic Archbishop Philip Wilson will be sentenced next month for concealing historical child sex abuse after a magistrate reserved his decision at a hearing today.
The Adelaide Archbishop’s lawyers presented several reports from various doctors detailing his medical conditions including diabetes, heart disease and a mild neurological cognitive disorder, which could possibly be Alzheimer’s.
They told the Newcastle Local Court that prison time would exacerbate his deteriorating health and that he could be targeted in prison.
Quoting a report from endocrinologist Dr David Torpy, Mr Temby said incarceration would have a major effect on Wilson’s health and “may even threaten his survival”.
In a landmark magistrate-only trial in May, Wilson was found guilty of covering up abuse by priest James Fletcher in the New South Wales Hunter region in the 1970s.
He is the world’s most senior Catholic to be convicted of the offence.
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