TigerBoy
December 6th, 2012, 06:15 AM
The 65-year-old flew back to the city from Sri Lanka on Thursday and was arrested on Friday after fresh charges were laid in Australia.
The new charges allege he repeatedly raped, molested and abused dozens of young boys at church-run institutions in the Newcastle-Maitland diocese over several decades.
Full story at the Sydney Morning Herald (http://www.smh.com.au/world/missing-mcgrath-appears-in-new-zealand-court-20121203-2apqq.html)
In 2006, he was jailed for five years for sexually abusing boys at Marylands School in Christchurch in the 1970s, and was paroled in 2008.
Source: New Zealand Herald (http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10851674)
With the scale of these offences it seems to me that - as in so many other cases - the institution of the Catholic Church has questions to answer about what it knew and what it did (if anything).
We already know they would prefer to handle such things 'internally (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2005/apr/24/children.childprotection)'. In 2001, Ratzinger wrote a letter, "De Delictis Gravioribus", to all Catholic bishops advising them how to handle accusations of sex crimes by priests. There was no recommendation to contact the police, but rather an instruction for them to report such cases only to the Vatican and tell no one else.
The new charges allege he repeatedly raped, molested and abused dozens of young boys at church-run institutions in the Newcastle-Maitland diocese over several decades.
Full story at the Sydney Morning Herald (http://www.smh.com.au/world/missing-mcgrath-appears-in-new-zealand-court-20121203-2apqq.html)
In 2006, he was jailed for five years for sexually abusing boys at Marylands School in Christchurch in the 1970s, and was paroled in 2008.
Source: New Zealand Herald (http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10851674)
With the scale of these offences it seems to me that - as in so many other cases - the institution of the Catholic Church has questions to answer about what it knew and what it did (if anything).
We already know they would prefer to handle such things 'internally (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2005/apr/24/children.childprotection)'. In 2001, Ratzinger wrote a letter, "De Delictis Gravioribus", to all Catholic bishops advising them how to handle accusations of sex crimes by priests. There was no recommendation to contact the police, but rather an instruction for them to report such cases only to the Vatican and tell no one else.