AUSTRALIA
Brisbane Times
Sitting quietly in the public gallery of a Newcastle court, the man who sparked a royal commission on child sex abuse following a set of explosive, scathing and accusatory claims about the police force and his colleagues has this week watched a queue of his former colleagues paint a very different picture.
One by one, former and serving officers in the Newcastle-Maitland area and from the elite Sex Crimes Squad in Sydney have rejected Detective Inspector Peter Fox’s claims at the Special Commission of Inquiry, one even describing his allegations as ”disgusting”, ”crazy” and that he had ”destroyed” the reputations of good, hard-working officers.
Inspector Fox propelled himself onto the national stage with allegations that a strike force set up to investigate allegations of abuse cover-up within the church had itself failed because of a whitewash by senior officers.
He alleged that his superiors ordered him to stop investigating the alleged cover-up of abuse committed by a priest, Father Denis McAlinden – however, Commissioner Margaret Cunneen, SC, has been told he was in fact never part of the police strike force, code-named Lantle, established to investigate the so-called cover-up.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.