NEWCASTLE (AUSTRALIA)
Newcastle Herald
Sept. 7, 2019
By Joanne McCarthy
ARCHBISHOP Philip Wilson’s evidence to a Special Commission of Inquiry about his knowledge of notorious Hunter paedophile priest Denis McAlinden in the 1980s and 1990s was “improbable”, “unsatisfactory” and “implausible”, a confidential 2014 report released on Friday found.
Archbishop Wilson’s evidence in 2013 that he had forgotten communications with anti-corruption crusader MP John Hatton in 1987 about “sexual misbehaviour” complaints involving McAlinden and young children was “improbable”, Commissioner Margaret Cunneen found after an inquiry into police and Catholic Church responses to Hunter child sexual abuse allegations.
The future archbishop assured Mr Hatton in a letter in July, 1987 that his complaint about McAlinden was “receiving attention”. Their communications also included phone contact on four occasions and a further letter in which the then Maitland-Newcastle Vicar General assured the MP that McAlinden had left the parish for “a full program of psychiatric assessment and help”.
The confidential fourth volume of the Special Commission of Inquiry was released more than five years after the first three volumes were made public, and following Archbishop Wilson’s conviction in 2018 for concealing child sex allegations about Hunter priest Jim Fletcher, which was overturned on appeal in December.
The Commission regarded as “unsatisfactory and implausible” the archbishop’s evidence in 2013 that he had “honestly forgotten” liaising with a psychiatrist about McAlinden, and talking with the priest by phone on five occasions between October, 1987 and February, 1988.
Mr Hatton’s report was one of a number of complaints about McAlinden to the future archbishop in 1987, the Commission found.
While the Hatton letter was raised during the inquiry hearings in 2013, Archbishop Wilson’s role – including having a direct confrontation with McAlinden, referring him to a psychiatrist and repeated phone calls with the paedophile priest before he was moved to Western Australia – has not been revealed until now.
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