AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald
June 8, 2015
Rory Callinan
Investigative journalist
“It has been confirmed that you have been touching the private parts of bodies of girls at this school …while at this point in time we don’t intend to press charges we must warn you we have witnesses…”
With the reading of this statement to a paedophile teacher on November 29, 1982, the cover-up of more than a decade of child sex abuse at St Agnes Catholic Primary School in Matraville was complete.
The abuse of girls by school teacher and netball coach Michael Drew had just been erased with the collaboration of some of the highest officials in Catholic Education.
The Herald has obtained a copy of the confidential dismissal statement read by the then headmaster, William Joseph Rooney, which allegedly provides written proof of how teachers and officers from Catholic Education discretely removed Drew without contacting police.
The document, which was highlighted during a recent civil court case involving Drew, is likely to send a shudder through the Catholic Church’s educational section as it potentially provides proof of the offence of misprision of a felony – the covering up of a crime.
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