Aha, clever. There’s a priest high up in the Catholic church in Australia, Brian Lucas, who is also a barrister (non-practicing), who thought of a good dodge for occasions when he had to talk to priests accused of child-rape: don’t take notes.
…the senior figure within the Catholic Church on Wednesday told an inquiry into sexual abuse he never made notes when dealing with about 35 priests accused of sex crimes.
The inquiry also heard that Father Brian wrote advice for clergy that it was a good idea not to take notes during interviews with accused priests to avoid the material being exposed during any ”subsequent legal process”.
Attaboy, Father Brian. Always protect your institution at the expense of its victims. Always stack the deck in favor of yourself and your colleagues, and be completely indifferent to the people you and your colleagues harm. Then lecture the rest of us and how to be as good as you and your colleagues.
He testified that he never reported priests accused of sexually abusing children to police. He had no recollection at all of a meeting in 1993 when the paedophile priest Denis McAlinden ”opened up and confessed … freely” to him, as stated by McAlinden in a letter tendered as evidence.
For about six years from 1990 it was Father Brian’s job to confront priests accused of sexual abuse around NSW and the ACT and persuade them to leave the ministry, he told the inquiry.
In that time he dealt with about 35 priests, ”seducing” more than 10 of them with ”strong armed” tactics into agreeing to resign the priesthood. He said the best way of keeping children safe from priestly abuse was to take the offending priest out of the ministry, and that was his priority.
He said ”it staggers me and shocks me” that McAlinden practised as a priest and worked at a school of 7000 children from kindergarten upwards in the Philippines after his priestly faculties were removed in Australia in 1993.
”Were you satisfied after your dealings with McAlinden that appropriate child protection steps had been taken?” asked the counsel assisting the inquiry, Julia Lonergan, SC. ”It was probably the best that was on offer at the time,” Father Brian replied.
“On offer”? By whom? What a ridiculous, evasive, don’t look at me reply. He could have “offered” better himself! That was the point of the question, I think.
“Is the real position as to why you didn’t want to take any note that you didn’t want it to have to be exposed in any subsequent legal process?” Ms Lonergan asked.
”I think that would be a reasonable comment,” he replied.
She asked whether he wrote his views for other clergy to the effect that it was a good idea not to take notes “so that a subsequent legal process that would compel production of them cannot be successful”.
“In some instances that would be accurate,” Father Brian responded.
The Mafia with rosaries.
H/t Ian.