Former Rockhampton bishop lauded sex abuser’s ‘unique gift’

A former Catholic bishop wrote a court reference for a pedophile priest in which he praised his “unique gift with youth”.

Retired Catholic Bishop Brian Heenan has appeared before the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

The former Catholic bishop of Rockhampton admits failing to protect children in his flock from a pedophile priest, before writing a court reference for the chaplain in which he praised his “unique gift with youth”.

Bishop Brian Heenan told the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse yesterday that victims told him as early as 1993 that they had been abused as children by priests at the Neerkol orphanage.

But he did not act, allowing Neerkol priest Reginald Durham to continue teaching primary school children religious education, work as a church administrator and live in the presbytery on the church’s dime.

Even when Durham was charged with 40 child-sex offences against six complainants in 1997, Bishop Heenan fought to keep him living at the presbytery.

However, the Sisters of Mercy nuns — responsible for running the brutal Neerkol orphanage that housed 4000 children between 1885 and 1979 — protested and Durham was evicted. He was stood down as a church administrator, though the Catholic diocese paid for his legal bills.

Under questioning from counsel assisting the commission Sophie­ David SC, the now retired Bishop Heenan admitted his response to the allegations had been wrong, showed a “complete lack of understanding” and was inappropriate. He conceded his actions may have exposed children in his parish to a greater risk of sexual assault by Durham.

“I probably made the very wrong assumption that, because of his age, that this wouldn’t be happening again,” he said. “But that wasn’t appropriate.”

Durham eventually pleaded guilty in 1999 to indecently dealing with a girl and was sentenced to jail. He never faced his remaining charges, after being declared mentally unfit.

Regardless of Durham’s guilty plea, Bishop Heenan wrote him a reference tendered in court. “(He has) a unique gift with youth,” the bishop wrote.

Bishop Heenan, who was appointed head of the Rockhampton diocese in 1991 and retired in 2003, said that by 1996 he had heard at least four accounts from survivors alleging sexual abuse by at least two priests. He told the royal commission he believed the complainants.

Yet in September 1996 — after the abuse claims were made public and a government minister spoke in parliament about Neerkol — Bishop Heenan wrote a letter he now says he’ll regret “for the rest of my days”.

“Over recent weeks, scurrilous allegations have been made against the sisters and the priests, in the form of claims of physical and sexual abuse,” he wrote in a letter distributed to priests, his diocese, and the Catholic Leader newspaper. “Slanderous statements have been made about … the orphanage.”

The letter was dismissive of the abuse claims, outraging and distressing Neerkol survivors. He admitted yesterday he wrote the letter because he was more concerned about the church’s reputation than the victims.