Church tried to stop a woman from suing, despite its own records showing it knew the priest was a paedophile

The Catholic church tried to stop a survivor suing it over the childhood abuse she suffered at the hands of a parish priest in northern New South Wales, despite its own records showing it knew the man was a paedophile but did nothing other than move him from parish to parish.

On Friday, the NSW supreme court rejected the Catholic church’s request for a permanent stay of proceedings brought by a woman who alleges she was sexually assaulted in 1968, when she was 14, by Father Clarence Anderson, a priest with the Lismore diocese.

The church had argued it could not possibly have a fair trial and that the case was “unjustifiably oppressive” due to the passage of time and the deaths of the priest and clergy with knowledge of the…