Bishop 'sat on' claims of priest abuse

A CATHOLIC bishop failed to act on years of allegations of child sex abuse by a priest, a report has found.

Max Jurd

A CATHOLIC bishop failed to act on years of allegations of child sex abuse by a priest, or to pass these warnings on to another diocese where the priest was later accused of abusing an altar boy, a report has found.

The report, written by the former Federal Court judge Antony Whitlam QC and published today, makes a series of damning findings about the church's management of the priest, who is identified only as "F".

The bishop from a regional diocese in NSW, who has since died, "sat on his hands and did nothing", after being warned about F's behaviour, the report found. His failure to investigate these allegations "is utterly inexplicable".

Mr Whitlam found a number of "glaring omission(s) from the records of the . . . diocese", including the reason F was abruptly removed from his first parish, Moree in northern NSW, in 1984.

The report found that a year earlier, the vicar-general of the regional diocese, told another parish priest: "We've got a problem with 'F'. He's been mucking around with kids."

One of F's alleged victims in Moree, former altar boy Damien Jurd, subsequently committed suicide. When Damien's parents, Max and Claire Jurd, met the bishop in 1987 to warn him their son was being sexually abused by a priest, "the bishop did not ask who the priest was", Mr Whitlam found. "There is no record of this meeting in the records of the . . . diocese. In my view, (the bishop's) treatment of Mr and Mrs Jurd was a disgrace."

Max Jurd yesterday told The Australian that he and his wife had not been back to church since that meeting. "When we told him (about their son), he just sort of threw his head in the air and walked out," Mr Jurd said.

"He was away for ages and when he came back he said: 'There's nothing I can do for you.' "

The bishop subsequently facilitated F's move to the Parramatta diocese in Sydney, where he abused another altar boy, Daniel Powell, who later committed suicide.

Despite receiving a series of allegations about F's behaviour, including a written report from 1990 suggesting he be sent for medical treatment, the bishop did not pass this information on. "(He) sat on his hands and did nothing with this information in circumstances where he knew that 'F' was exercising his ministry in another diocese," the report said.

The Whitlam report was commissioned in July by the current bishops of the regional diocese and Parramatta after the revelation of a 1992 meeting with three of Australia's most senior Catholic clerics, in which F allegedly confessed to abusing altar boys.

It finds no evidence of a cover-up by the three men, despite the fact each has given a different account of what was said and none subsequently went to the police. In a letter written shortly after the meeting, the current vicar-general of the regional diocese said F "admitted that there had been five boys around the age of 10 and 11 that he had sexually interfered with".

Two boys were subject to physical abuse over a year, the letter said, during which time "he fondled the genitals of each of these boys and to quote, 'sucked off their dicks'."

Neither of the other senior clerics present, Brian Lucas, general secretary of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference, and John Usher, chancellor of the archdiocese of Sydney, "recollects any admissions such as those", the report found. F did not name his alleged victims during the meeting, and the letter by the vicar-general may have "attributed a meaning to what F said" that the other clerics did not share, the Whitlam report found.

"I do not disbelieve Father Lucas and Monsignor Usher. Accordingly, if F made no admissions that either of them considered could and should be reported to the police, then there was no 'cover-up'," it said.

The current bishops of the regional diocese and Parramatta both conceded the late bishop had "failed dismally" in his handling of F, and said they did not know how many children the priest had abused across NSW.

"It's hard for us to face up to these things having been done by people acting in God's name and the church's name, and to face up to the way these allegations were mishandled," said the Bishop of Parramatta, Anthony Fisher.

"This bishop failed dismally with respect to this priest and his victims."

The bishop of the regional diocese said his predecessor "sat on his hands. The question is whether or not that inaction enabled F to have access to further victims. If that is the case, then this is an absolute tragedy."

A spokeswoman for NSW police said: "No criminal action is being taken by police based on the information in the report."