The Sydney Morning Herald
Peter Fox: ”I just didn’t trust other police.” Photo: Dean Osland
A ”Catholic mafia” within the ranks of Newcastle police colluded with church leaders to cover up sex abuse in the Maitland-Newcastle diocese, an inquiry into the abuse has been told.
Detective Chief Inspector Peter Fox told the inquiry on Monday that while on leave his office had been raided, he and other police had been pulled off investigations into the alleged cover-up of child sex abuse and a colleague told him about a ”Catholic mafia” within the ranks of Newcastle police.
”I just didn’t trust other police,” he said.
The inquiry, headed by Commissioner Margaret Cunneen, was told police chose not to charge former Catholic Bishop Michael Malone with hindering police investigations into paedophile priests.
The inquiry was also told that senior police were gagged from talking to Newcastle Herald journalist Joanne McCarthy, despite her being ”the genesis” of a strikeforce investigating the cover-up of child sex abuse within the diocese.
In her opening address, Commissioner Cunneen said that the Maitland-Newcastle diocese ”has had a very troubled history regarding issues of child protection and the sexual abuse of children”.
She referred to two convicted paedophile priests, Denis McAlinden and James Fletcher, who had committed a ”reprehensible betrayal of faith” against ”vulnerable and innocent children”.
Chief Inspector Fox described taking a statement from a young victim of Fletcher’s as ”the worst I’ve ever encountered”. ”It was the most horrid in nature, the most dreadful of crimes,” he said. The victim had attempted suicide several times.
Chief Inspector Fox said he first became suspicious about possible collusion between police and senior members of the church in June 2002.
Then, he said, he had interviewed senior members of the diocese who later warned James Fletcher that he was being investigated for child sex crimes.
”The scope for charging (then-Catholic Bishop Michael) Malone was there – I formally discussed charging Malone with the Director of Public Prosecutions,” the officer said. ”But it was suggested that Michael Malone would be better used as a witness than as an accused.”
Asked by Counsel Assisting, Julia Lonergan SC, if there was a formal brief taken in regards to Bishop Malone, Chief Inspector Fox replied ”no”. ”Were any active steps taken to investigate the concealment of offences up to 2010,” Ms Lonergan asked. ”No,” the officer said.
Chief Inspector Fox said his interest in the alleged concealing of crimes grew when he was contacted by journalist Joanne McCarthy, ”who had piles of information” about the alleged covering-up of child abuse by senior Catholic clergy, including Bishop Malone and Adelaide Archbishop Philip Wilson.
Chief Inspector Fox told the inquiry that two senior police officers told him an investigation would not proceed.
”[Detective Chief Inspector] Brad Tayler did not want to investigate … He wants it to go away,” Chief Inspector Fox said. He was later told by Detective Chief Inspector Dave Waddell to stop investigating.
Asked by Ms Lonergan if the term ”Catholic mafia”, first coined by former colleague Troy Grant, was made in reference to the police or the clergy, Chief Inspector Fox replied: ”I think it may have incorporated both … but I took it to mean police because of the way it was said at the time.”
The officer is expected to continue giving evidence on Tuesday.
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Whistleblower detective fronts sex abuse inquiry
Yahoo! News
Updated May 7, 2013, 12:48 am
By Dan Cox and staff, ABC
ABC
The New South Wales policeman who blew the whistle on an alleged cover-up of child sexual abuse in the Hunter Valley says senior police searched his office for sensitive files while he was on leave.
The inquiry is looking at how complaints about deceased former priests Denis McAlinden and Jim Fletcher in the Maitland-Newcastle diocese were investigated.
It was sparked by the allegations of whistleblower Detective Chief Inspector Peter Fox, who is giving evidence today.
Peter Fox has told the inquiry two senior police officers turned his office upside down while he was on leave for a month.
He said the sensitive files they were after were in a secure safe, but after that he started to distrust senior police.
Earlier, Peter Fox told the hearing that a statement from a victim of James Fletcher was the most difficult he had taken.
“The crimes were of the most horrid nature, the worst I’ve heard,” he said.
Detective Chief Inspector Fox told the inquiry there was collusion by the then Bishop Michael Malone as well as other clergy.
He said James Fletcher was warned by the church he was being investigated in June 2002.
Detective Chief Inspector Fox said that gave Fletcher full knowledge there was a complainant and who that complainant was, and gave him the opportunity to destroy evidence that would have affected the investigation.
He also told the court, he has heard a former policeman Troy Grant describe other officers aligned to the church as the “Catholic mafia”.
Detective Chief Inspector Fox said Mr Grant’s investigation into another paedophile priest Vincent Ryan was hindered when he was continually given other substantial cases to investigate and sent away on trips.
He said Mr Grant was not able to fully investigate the case, and it felt deliberate.
New South Wales Deputy Senior Crown Prosecutor Margaret Cunneen SC is overseeing the inquiry.
In her opening address, she told the inquiry that children are “vulnerable and innocent” and that sexual abuse “casts a shadow over their whole lives.”
The Commissioner said all sexual abuse is a gross and inexcusable breach of trust.
“The diocese of Maitland-Newcastle has had a very troubled history regarding issues of child protection and the sexual abuse of children,” she said.
The Commissioner said it is not too late for victims to come forward.
“I have previously encouraged and continue to encourage these people to contact the inquiry so that their voices may be heard,” she said.
Hunter Valley man Peter Gogarty was abused by Fletcher when he was a boy.
Before the inquiry, he said he hopes anyone found to be involved in a cover-up will be brought to account.
“I think a prosecution out of this, of senior people in the Catholic Church would be a wonderful outcome for the victims,” he said.
“I will be very, very interested to find out if the police have deliberately decided that it was too hard to investigate these matters, then that’s a serious, serious concern for our community.”
He said he was very happy the inquiry was going ahead.
Over the next two weeks, the inquiry will hear from eighteen witnesses, including some of the state’s most senior police officers.
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Office ransacked: NSW police whistleblower
news.com.au
May 06, 2013
By Doug Conway, AAP Senior Correspondent
AAP
A whistleblower’s office was searched while he was away, according to a child sexual abuse inquiry.
A POLICE whistleblower who alleges a “Catholic mafia” including police covered up child sexual abuse by priests in the NSW Hunter Valley has made explosive claims that his office was ransacked while he was away on leave.
Detective Chief Inspector Peter Fox told a government-ordered inquiry that in September 2010, on the day he started a month’s leave, he was asked to handle a ministerial complaint regarding concerns about a “church conspiracy”.
When he returned from leave he was told by a now-retired public servant that his superior, Superintendent Charles Haggett, and Detective Chief Inspector Wayne Humphrey, had got the keys to his office and searched it “from top to bottom, looking in every filing cabinet”.
“You are kidding,” an astonished Insp Fox told the public servant.
“Please don’t tell them I told you,” she said. “But whatever it was they were looking for, they didn’t find it.”
Insp Fox told the special commission of inquiry in Newcastle on Monday he had taken the precaution of locking the file in his safe because he was concerned that “something like this” might occur.
He described the action as “totally unprofessional”.
He said that in his 35 years in the police force he had never heard of senior officers turning a colleague’s office “upside down” to find a sensitive brief.
Insp Fox said other policemen including Troy Grant, a former officer who is now the state Nationals MP for Dubbo, had told him they felt they were being discouraged from investigating the clergy.
Counsel assisting the inquiry, Julia Lonergan, SC, told Insp Fox that Mr Grant had made a statement saying he was not hindered and had made no such observation to him.
“I clearly remember the conversation because it was the first time I had heard the phrase ‘Catholic mafia’. I am surprised he would say that,” said Insp Fox.
Commissioner Margaret Cunneen, SC, is concentrating on two priests in the Maitland-Newcastle diocese, both now dead – Father Denis McAlinden, who she said was regarded by many as a serial offender over four decades, and Father James Fletcher, a convicted pedophile who a judge said was guilty of a “gross and inexcusable breach of trust”.
Insp Fox said a statement from a former altar boy who was a victim of Father Fletcher was one of the most difficult he had ever had to take.
He did not specify the nature of Fletcher’s crimes but said they were “most horrid … dreadful, dreadful crimes”.
The traumatised victim had attempted suicide multiple times.
Insp Fox also alleged collusion by Bishop Michael Malone and others which he said had led to Father Fletcher being forewarned about his investigations.
He said he started to “seriously distrust” some senior police and ultimately pursued his investigations in confidence rather than logging them through official police channels.
“I didn’t trust the police environment,” he told the inquiry in the Newcastle Supreme Court.
Insp Fox said that at a meeting in 2010 he was told by Superintendent Max Mitchell, now an assistant commissioner, not to continue his investigations into sexual abuse.
Mr Mitchell and Mr Grant are both due to give evidence to the inquiry, along with other senior police and church officials.
The inquiry continues on Tuesday.
Read and weep. That’s all I can say. Read it and weep.
Do not be intimidated and do not give up investigating those who had their cases dropped through insufficient evidence.
All support to those people brave enough to come forward and out these bastards who prey on innocent, trusting children!