….Catholic priests abused 4,400 Australians in 60 years
An Australian court has found a Catholic archbishop guilty of concealing child sexual abuse in the 1970s.
Philip Wilson, the archbishop of Adelaide, becomes the most senior Catholic in the world to be charged and convicted of the offence.
He was found to have covered up the abuse of altar boys by a pedophile priest colleague in New South Wales.
During his trial he denied being told about the abuse by some of the victims.
In a statement issued by the church on Wednesday, Wilson said he was “obviously disappointed” with the verdict and would consider his legal options.
Last month, Wilson told the Newcastle Local Court he had no knowledge of priest James Fletcher’s actions, which took place when he was an assistant priest in Maitland, 130km (80 miles) north of Sydney.
Fletcher was later convicted of nine child sexual abuse charges in 2004, and died in jail in 2006.
One of his victims, former altar boy Peter Creigh, told the court he had described the abuse to Wilson in detail in 1976, five years after it took place.
Magistrate Robert Stone rejected Wilson’s claims that he had no memory of the conversation, and said he found Mr Creigh to be a reliable witness.
The priest knew “what he was hearing was a credible allegation and the accused wanted to protect the Church and its reputation”, Magistrate Stone said.
Another victim, who cannot be named, told the court he disclosed the abuse in the confessional box when he was 11 years old. He said Wilson told him he was telling lies and to recite 10 Hail Mary prayers as punishment.
Child sexual abuse survivors praised the verdict in emotional scenes outside the court following the decision.
“The decision will hopefully unravel the hypocrisy, the deceit, and the abuse of power and trust that the church has displayed,” Mr Creigh told reporters.
Wilson’s lawyers had tried to get the case thrown out on four occasions, after the 67-year-old was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.
He will be sentenced in June and faces a maximum two-year jail term.
Catholic priests abused 4,400 Australians in 60 years
An inquiry examining institutional sex abuse in Australia has heard 7% of the nation’s Catholic priests allegedly abused children between 1950 and 2010.
In one religious order, over 40% of church figures were accused of abuse.
Over 4,440 people claim to have been victims between 1980 and 2015, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sex Abuse was told.
The commission, Australia’s highest form of inquiry, is also investigating abuse at non-religious organisations.
It has previously heard harrowing testimony from scores of people who suffered abuse at the hands of clergy.
A victim said he was sexually abused by his Catholic Christian Brother teacher in his classroom, with other students ordered to look away.
In another case, the inquiry heard allegations that a priest threatened a girl with a knife and made children kneel between his legs.
‘Children punished’
The full scale of the problem emerged on Monday, when the commission released the statistics it has gathered.
Gail Furness, the lead lawyer assisting the commission in Sydney, said more than 1,000 Catholic institutions across Australia were identified in claims of sexual abuse, with a total of 1,880 alleged perpetrators between 1980 and 2015.
The average age of the victims was 10.5 for girls and 11.5 for boys. On average, it took 33 years for each instance of abuse to be reported.
The victims’ stories were “depressingly similar”, Ms Furness said.
“Children were ignored or worse, punished. Allegations were not investigated. Priests and religious [figures] were moved. The parishes or communities to which they were moved knew nothing of their past.”
Anthony and Chrissie Foster, the parents of two girls who were abused by their parish priest, said the Catholic Church had shown “no mercy, no remorse. Nothing.”
“For so long this has been the way they acted to hide perpetrators, to move them on, with no regard for children whatsoever, that other children have become victims, and suffered this terrible fate,” they told ABC news.
Abuse survivor Andrew Collins told the BBC it had been “drummed into his head” by the four men who abused him between the ages of seven and 14 – two teachers, a priest and a Catholic Brother – that he was the one who had “done wrong”.
“I did try to tell my mum once and she said it was absolute rubbish and a man of God would never do such a thing,” he said.
‘Shocking, tragic, indefensible’
The royal commission also detailed the number of abuse claims against 10 religious orders, with data showing that four orders had allegations of abuse against more than 20% of their members.
The royal commission, set up in 2013, is investigating allegations of sexual and physical abuse across dozens of institutions in Australia, including schools, sports clubs and religious organisations.
Ms Furness said on Monday that 60% of all survivors of abuse were from faith-based organisations. Of those, nearly two-thirds concerned the Catholic Church.
Francis Sullivan, chief executive of the Truth Justice and Healing Council, which is co-ordinating the Catholic Church’s response to the inquiry, said the data reflected “a massive failure” by the church to protect children.
SOURCE: BBC
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