BATHURST (AUSTRALIA)
Western Advocate
March 4, 2019
By Joanne McCarthy
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THE Vincentian Catholic order has denied liability for notorious child sex offender priest Brian Spillane’s abuse of a Bathurst school student despite Spillane’s conviction for the crime, and despite Pope Francis’s vow at a Vatican summit that the church would give survivors “all the support they need”.
Spillane was “on a frolic of his own” when he indecently assaulted Damien Sheridan, 13, at St Stanislaus’ College in 1985 after the homesick boy sought help from the school chaplain, the Vincentians said in response to Mr Sheridan’s 2018 civil suit.
In the same response, the Vincentians did not admit the abuse occurred despite Spillane’s conviction the previous year.
The order is also yet to join the National Redress Scheme, after avoiding Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse scrutiny because of the number of outstanding prosecutions against the Vincentian boarding school’s former priests, brothers, teachers and lay workers.
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