AUSTRALIA
WA Today
July 23, 2012
Richard Baker, Nick McKenzie
POLICE have admitted for the first time that a notorious paedophile priest escaped justice and lived out his life in Britain because they failed to question him about serious child sex allegations.
Victoria’s Assistant Commissioner, Steve Fontana, confirmed Father Ronald Dennis Pickering was not pursued because detectives handling complaints about him in the 1990s believed force command was unlikely to support any request to travel to Britain.
Pickering, who died recently in Britain after fleeing Australia in 1993, has been linked to the suicides of up to eight people he allegedly sexually abused as children at various Catholic parishes around Melbourne in the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s.
The Melbourne archdiocese has acknowledged in writing Pickering’s ”proclivity for child abuse” and has financially compensated several victims. Pickering is understood to have received some pension entitlements from the church after its leadership became aware of his crimes.
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