AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald
Leesha Mckenny, Bianca Hall
July 6, 2012
ONE of the most senior clergymen in the Australian Catholic Church says it was not the church’s responsibility to tell police about a priest who admitted to repeatedly sexually abusing five children as young as 10.
After returning from overseas this week, the general secretary of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference, Father Brian Lucas, told the Herald yesterday admissions from a priest in a 1992 meeting with him and two other senior clergy did not include ”sufficient specific detail” to report him to secular authorities.
”The first responsibility to report crime is by the victim. Our responsibility is to get him out of ministry, which is what we did,” Father Lucas said. ”We did not have the detail that would be useful to the police.”
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