AUSTRALIA
Catholic Leader
Published: 27 January 2013
By: Paul Dobbyn
A REPORT commissioned by the bishops of Parramatta and Armidale into how Church authorities dealt with a priest who allegedly sexually abused boys for nearly a decade in the 1980s and ’90s in those dioceses has revealed severe deficiencies in procedures at the time.
The subject of the report, Fr “F”, removed from ministry in 1992, was believed responsible for multiple cases of sexual abuse of boys in parishes in Armidale and Parramatta dioceses.
Two of Fr F’s alleged victims suicided at the age of 28.
However, former Federal Court judge Antony Whitlam QC, who conducted the inquiry, said “had the procedures for reporting child abuse laid down in that document (the Church’s Towards Healing protocol) been in force in 1984 and observed in Moree at the time, ‘Fr F’ would have been stopped in his tracks”.
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