Archbishop accosted by child sex abuse survivors as he leaves court

[Ulquiorra]

ARCHBISHOP of Adelaide, Philip Wilson, has been accosted by child sex abuse survivors as he left Newcastle Court following his sentencing for concealing the crimes of a paedophile priest, in a landmark case.

Wilson, 67, was sentenced to 12 months imprisonment with a six month non-parole period but will continue on bail while he is assessed for home detention. It was a decision that prompted sighs from the packed public gallery. He had faced a maximum of two years jail. He will return to court for a decision on August 14.

It comes after he was found guilty in May of failing to report to police between 2004-2006 the repeated abuse of two altar boys, by paedophile priest James Patrick Fletcher, in the NSW Hunter Region in the 1970s.

He is the most senior Catholic official in the world to be charged with the offence.

As Wilson left court this morning he was repeatedly booed by child sex abuse survivors Gerard McDonald and Paul Gray — who were not directly involved in his case — but told news.com.au they wanted to support fellow survivors.

Mr Gray shouted “what about the children” as the Archbishop walked to a waiting car, flanked by media seeking comment, but refused to respond.

One anonymous bystander yelled: “Can I spit on him?” as two protesters held up signs accusing the church of hypocrisy.

Moments later, Mr McDonald rolled up his sleeve to show a tattoo on his forearm which read: “SURVIVOR”, and told news.com.au that Wilson “only got a slap on the wrist”.

“Disgusting,” he said.

“He’ll be able to kick back and watch Netflix in a nice home on the Central Coast … let’s face it that’s a lot nicer than a jail cell.”

Wilson has vehemently denied the charge and unsuccessfully attempted to have the case thrown out of court four times before it went to trial in April.

In sentencing this morning, Magistrate Robert Stone found that Wilson failed to act against Fletcher because “he wanted to protect the church and its image”.

Magistrate Stone said “there is no remorse or contrition showed by the offender”.

“The whole of the community is devastated in so many ways by the decades of abuse and its concealment,” the magistrate said.

“We are all the poorer for what has occurred.

“I am of the opinion the sentence should not be suspended. It does not support the terms of general deterrence.

“On that basis, the only available remaining option is full-time imprisonment or home detention.”

Magistrate Stone said Wilson’s otherwise “good character” and work in the community made him a candidate to serve his sentence in home detention pending the results of an assessment.

Peter Gogarty, a victim of Fletcher — the paedophile priest at the centre of the concealment case — said he was disappointed that Wilson had walked free from court, but “there is no doubt the archbishop has received a significant sentence”.

Mr Gogarty said Wilson had probably been let off “a little bit too lightly” but survivors remained pleased by the landmark conviction.

“We have made history here in Australia: The highest-ranked church official to ever be brought to account for what we know was a worldwide systematic abuse of children and the concealment of that abuse,” Mr Gogarty told reporters. “So I’m content that we’ve done something in Australia that nobody else has been able to manage.”

Fletcher was found guilty in December 2004 of nine counts of child sexual abuse.

The magistrate found that in 1976, one of the victims, Peter Creigh, told Wilson that Fletcher had repeatedly subjected him to acts of punishment and sexual abuse about five years earlier, when he was a 10-year-old altar boy in the local diocese North of Sydney. He had expected Wilson to take action.

Wilson was most recently South Australia’s Catholic Church leader but at the time was a junior priest at St Joseph’s Church, East Maitland, aged 25.

But Wilson failed to tell authorities about Fletcher’s crimes against Mr Creigh and several other altar boys.

Mr Creigh, now 57 and a father of six, was today recovering in a Newcastle hospital after undergoing a quadruple bypass and was unable to attend sentencing.

Other victims, and their families, gave strikingly similar evidence about what they told Wilson during the 1970s and 1980s.

A second victim, who cannot be named, said he was about 11 in 1976 when he went into a confessional box to tell Wilson how Fletcher had abused him, the court previously heard. The magistrate found Wilson had at that stage obtained the level of belief needed to report what he knew to authorities.

Fletcher, 65, died in prison in 2006 while serving a 10-year prison term for abusing another young boy, Daniel Feenan, now aged 41.

Mr Feenan attended Wilson’s sentencing on Tuesday and told reporters outside the court that if the clergyman had acted on the allegations he heard in 1976, he never would have been abused.

He said he would have preferred to see the archbishop leave court in handcuffs but that he was “extremely happy” at the prospect of him getting home detention.

“He is the most senior Catholic to ever be charged and he is actually giving him 50 per cent of the maximum term,” Mr Feenan said. “That is groundbreaking in itself.”

Outside court, Mr Feenan and Mr Gogarty told reporters that Wilson needed to resign as archbishop and called on the Pope to sack him if that didn’t happen.

“If the archbishop does not resign, then the Catholic Church becomes a bigger laughing stock than it already is,” Mr Gogarty said.

Wilson, who is suffering from the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease, said he could not remember the two altar boys telling him in 1976 about the abuse. Prosecutor Gareth Harrison claimed Wilson had maintained a “cover-up attitude” since 1976 to protect the church’s reputation.

During his trial, Wilson was accused by Mr Harrison of being a “consummate Catholic politician” and a man who was part of “an entrenched toxic culture of covering things up.”

“The accused does in fact remember (the crimes) but continues to cover it up,” Mr

Harrison told the magistrate.

“(He) was like a cat on a hot tin roof when answering those questions, he ducked and he weaved.”

Defence barrister Stephen Odgers SC argued Wilson was not guilty because the case was circumstantial and there was no evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt the archbishop was told about the abuse.

Three weeks before he was due to give evidence as a key witness in the trial, Father Glen Walsh, 55, took his own life.

Wilson’s lawyers earlier insisted that jailing the sick and frail clergyman, who had a pacemaker, could “threaten his survival” and put him at risk of extreme prison violence.

Medical reports tendered in court showed a “complex range of conditions” including Alzheimer’s, heart disease, hypertension, diabetes, sleep apnoea and “recurrent falls”.

The prosecution argued the Archbishop should be sent to jail so a clear message is sent to the community that the court would not tolerate “the endemic and systematic cover up of child abuse.”

The archbishop previously told the court no one had ever come forward to tell him of allegations of child sex abuse during his 40 years as a clergyman.

Following his May conviction, Wilson stood aside from the role as Adelaide Archbishop, with South Australia’s Vicar General Father Philip Marshall temporarily taking the reins.