Maltese priest based in Melbourne charged with sexual assault

Father Victor Farrugia, parish priest at St Augustine’s Church in Bourke Street, has been charged on summons with eight counts of indecent assault. The police charges were pressed as Melbourne’s Archbishop Denis Hart has not yet detailed how the Church will change its internal investigation process after systemic flaws were exposed by The Age and Victoria Police last year.

This case echoes similar allegations made by a number of Maltese men who had been residing at the St Joseph Home in Hamrun when they were children. While the Maltese Head of State, and Archbishop Paul Cremona, met with the victims in the run-up to Pope Benedict’s visit last April, the curia’s Response Team, appointed to investigate the allegations seven years ago, has not yet drawn a conclusion. While the victims are satisfied with the pace the court case has taken, they claim the Church team is carrying out no investigation at all as it has not even interviewed them.

In August, Father Farrugia’s lawyers in Melbourne were inadvertently tipped off by the Church’s privately hired investigator, Peter O’Callaghan, that police were investigating the priest for alleged sexual assault. Police believe Mr O’Callaghan “mishandled’” communications with the priest’s lawyers by providing the inadvertent tip-off.

The police were consequently unable to use several evidence-gathering methods in covert inquiries, including secretly recording the alleged victim phoning the priest. Despite this, officers gathered enough evidence to charge Father Farrugia last week.

According to The Age, the police familiar with the case also believe that Mr O’Callaghan had given the alleged victim incorrect advice about whether the allegations represented sexual assault under criminal law.

Mr O’Callaghan told the victim last year in writing that: ‘”Without seeking to dissuade you from reporting the matter to police if you so desire, I must say that the conduct you described is unlikely to be held by a court as criminal conduct.”

However, detectives have assessed the alleged conduct as worthy of criminal charges.

The latest edition of the parish newsletter mentions that another priest is acting in Father Farrugia’s “absence” and says “we continue to keep Father Victor in our prayers,” The Age reported. But the parish secretary denied the phrases were in the newsletter when questioned by the same newspaper.

The Melbourne Archdiocese is yet to reveal changes to the “Melbourne Response”, its clerical abuse handling process under which Mr O’Callaghan is appointed and paid to investigate clerical abuse allegations and refer victims to a compensation panel. The process has run since 1996 without review.

Changes to the Melbourne Response were requested by police after The Age last year exposed the inadvertent tip-offs to Father Farrugia and another priest, Paul Pavlou.

Mr O’Callaghan told the priests’ lawyers that they were under police investigation, without the consent of detectives, and before officers had interviewed the suspects.