The church protected the paedophile Father Denis McAlinden but Broken Rites exposed this cover-up

• Article updated on 9 October 2011.

Officially, Father McAlinden belonged to the Maitland-Newcastle diocese, north of Sydney in New South Wales.

Broken Rites began hearing from his victims in 1994. Broken Rites ascertained that:

• For years, the Maitland-Newcastle diocese had been transferring McAlinden backwards and forwards between New South Wales and Western Australia after he abused children in each of those states.

• In 2007, Broken Rites discovered that the Maitland-Newcastle diocese also arranged for him to be "warehoused" McAlinden in Papua New Guinea for several years, in the middle of his career.

• In 2008, further research by Broken Rites revealed that the Maitland-Newcastle diocese also arranged for him to spend a year doing parish work in New Zealand to protect him from exposure in Australia.

In late 2007, the Maitland-Newcastle diocese was forced to admit publicly (but reluctantly) that Father McAlinden had been a serial child-molester and that the church authorities had known about his offences for decades.

Embarrassed, the diocese apologised for its long silence about McAlinden and for having left the individual victims to cope on their own without any help from the church.

Background

Broken Rites has ascertained that Fr Denis McAlinden was an Irish-bprn priest who arrived in the Maitland-Newcastle diocese, aged 26, in 1949, the year he was ordained. It is not known why he left Ireland or why he surfaced in Australia. He was one of a significant number of Irish priests who arrived, often unaccountably, in Australia around that time.

McAlinden was trained and ordained in Ireland, but the name of the seminary is not known. It is not known whether he was trained as a diocesan priest or as a member of a religious order. It is not known how his Australian appointment came to be in the Maitland-Newcastle diocese. The Maitland-Newcastle bishop at that time (until 1956) was Edmund Gleeson, a member of the Redemptorist order.

Soon after McAlinden's arrival in Maitland-Newcastle, talk started about him touching children.

Broken Rites has checked McAlinden's parish appointments in the annual Australian Catholic directories. In the 1960s, his parishes in the Maitland-Newcastle diocese included Singleton, Mussellbrook, Murrurindi and Greta.

The directories indicate that in 1969 he was transferred out of the Maitland-Newcastle diocese to a diocese (called Mendi) in Papua New Guinea, where he spent about four years. It is not known what kind of problem in McAlinden's ministry caused such an unusual transfer but it is easy to guess.

By 1974, he had been brought back to Maitland-Newcastle diocese to become the Parish Priest (that is, in charge) at the Kendall parish (a coastal town, north of Newcastle). But, extraordinarily, within a couple of years, he was removed from this position.

The Maitland-Newcastle diocese allowed McAlinden to stay in the ministry but only in a relieving, temporary capacity. In the 1981 directory the diocese relegated him to its category of "supplementary" priests, listing him as doing "relief duties" at its Nelson Bay parish (north of Newcastle).

Western Australia

This transfer involved a deal between the bishop's office in Maitland-Newcastle and the bishop's offfice in Geraldton. The Catholics of Maitland-Newcastle were not told why McAlinden was leaving that diocese, and the Catholics of the Geraldton diocese were not told why this priest was arriving.

Broken Rites first heard about McAlinden's West Australian offences in 1994 when we received a phone call from a young woman "Susan", who said that, in 1982 when she was aged 10, she was sexually abused by Fr Denis McAlinden at "Our Lady of the Pilbara" parish at Wickham, Western Australia. Thus, the Maitland-Newcastle diocese had made McAlinden into another diocese's problem — and the Geraldton had knowingly inflicted a problem priest on a 10-year-old child.

New Zealand

Broken Rites research reveals that in 1984 McAlinden was in New Zealand, where he was "on loan" to the Diocese of Hamilton, situated in the North Island, where he did "supply" (relieving work) in rural parishes. This kind of transfer involved an arrangement between the Maitland-Newcastle diocese and the Hamilton diocese. Any victim of McAlinden in New Zealand could take civil legal action against the Diocese of Maitland-Newcastle (for turning McAlinden loose in New Zealand), as well as against the Hamilton Diocese (for accepting a problem priest from Australia).

McAlinden was back in Maitland-Newcastle in the mid-1980s but the Australian Catholic Directory in the late 1980s gave McAlinden's address merely as care of the bishop's office in Maitland.

Western Australia again

From 1994 to 1998, he remained listed in the annual directories as being "on leave" from the Maitland-Newcastle diocese, and his forwarding address was care of the diocesan office. He was not listed in 1999 or thereafter.

During McAlinden's career, he was protected by each of the three bishops who administered the Maitland-Newcastle diocese during that time: Edmund Gleeson (to 1956), John Toohey (1956-75) and Leo Clarke (1976-95).

Broken Rites and the media

The Newcastle Herald (a daily paper) immediately publicised our Vincent Ryan story, which in turn prompted Herald readers to contact the newspaper about another protected offender, Fr Denis McAlinden.

Beginning on 29 September 2007, the Herald published a series of articles about McAlinden, written by staff journalist Joanne McCarthy with help from Broken Rites. Within a few weeks after the first McAlinden article, the Herald became aware of at least 20 victims of this priest. A number of other victims contacted the Maitland-Newcastle diocese.

New information in 2007

The Newcastle Herald articles revealed much about McAlinden and how the Catholic Church handled him over five decades:-

• Talk about McAlinden started shortly after he arrived in Maitland-Newcastle in 1949. A Newcastle woman, who works in the Catholic system, told the Newcastle Herald in 2007 that she remembers her father warning her to "keep well clear of the young curate" only months into his first position in the diocese. In 1996, after Father Vincent Ryan was charged, the woman raised the name of McAlinden at her Catholic workplace and was told he had left New South Wales.
  
  
• A prominent Newcastle region businesswoman, "Cathy", says she was the last child in McAlinden's car on the drive home from school in the 1960s. She "screamed and screamed" when he molested her on a dead-end road at Branxton (west of Maitland). Cathy says Father McAlinden also molested her younger sister. Cathy knows two other girls who were molested by McAlinden. Cathy says she phoned Bishop Michael Malone's office in late 1996, and left three messages that she wanted to speak with the bishop about a private matter but she never received a call back. (Malone had taken over this diocese from Bishop Leo Clarke, who retired.)
  
  
• Another woman, "Mary", says McAlinden locked her in the presbytery at Hamilton (a Newcastle suburb) with him and molested her in 1966, when she was aged 11.
  
  
• In the mid-1980s, Mike Stanwell (then aged 30) was principal of a small Catholic school, west of Newcastle, when he became concerned about reports from young children who had been in the adjoining church with Father McAlinden. Mr Stanwell says there were consistent stories of what the priest did when he sat children on his lap. Mr Stanwell went to see Bishop Leo Clarke, who said he would send McAlinden away. McAlinden was moved to a parish closer to Newcastle. After receiving further reports about the priest and a child, Mr Stanwell again went to see Bishop Leo Clarke. Within a few weeks Father McAlinden had left the diocese; but, as the Broken Rites research has indicated, he ended up in the Bunbury diocese in Western Australia. This kind of transfer or loan required a reference from McAlinden's "home" bishop — Bishop Leo Clarke in Maitland-Newcastle.
  
  
• "Jenny", aged 28 in 2007, told the Newcastle Herald that she was seven or eight when Father Denis McAlinden gave lollies to children in the school playground. She followed McAlinden to the church several times. Jenny's mother says she was devastated when Jenny recounted what the priest liked to do when he sat little girls on his lap. Jenny also told her mother about two friends who said the priest liked to bathe them; those children stayed overnight with him, Jenny's mother said. Jenny has never spoken to police or the church about McAlinden. She remembers that her school principal, Mike Stanwell, told all pupils not to go down to the church because it was out of bounds. Jenny does not go to church any more.
  
  
• During a weekend in 1987, McAlinden was suddenly removed from a Maitland-Newcastle parish. Later, Bishop Leo Clarke stopped McAlinden from working as a priest in the diocese completely.
  
  
• But the diocese did not report McAlinden to the police; nor did it advise or help any family to do so.
  
  
• The "grounding" of McAlinden referred only to Maitland-Newcastle, not to the rest of the world. The church allowed McAlinden to go to Western Australia, where he ministered in the small inland farming town of Kojonup, in the Bunbury diocese, south of Perth, in the early 1990s.
  
  
• In 1992, he was charged in a West Australian court with incidents of three indecent assault charges involving a 10-year-old girl, although these charges did not result in a conviction.
  
  
• New South Wales police have confirmed that in 1999 they received a report that McAlinden had sexual intercourse with an eleven-year-old girl in the Maitland-Newcastle diocese in the late 1950s or early 1960s. Sources say that Father McAlinden was known to transport children from home to school in his car during this period. The police investigated this complaint in 1999 and spoke to senior representatives of the Maitland-Newcastle diocese, who confirmed that McAlinden still officially belonged to this diocese in 1999. In December 1999, the NSW police issued a warrant for the arrest of Father McAlinden, then aged 76, but evidently at this time he was overseas, probably visiting Ireland.
  
  
• In 2001, New South Wales police received another report about McAlinden — that he had molested a young girl in the Newcastle region in the 1970s.
  
  
• In mid-2002 the Maitland-Newcastle diocese secretly finalised a compensation case relating to McAlinden.
  
  
• In October 2005, a senior Maitland-Newcastle diocese representative phoned Newcastle police to advise that Father McAlinden was dying of cancer in a Catholic Church-run aged-care centre at Subiaco in Western Australia. West Australian police visited the priest and confirmed he was too ill to be extradited to NSW. He died one month later and is buried in Perth.
  
  
• Father McAlinden talked in Maitland-Newcastle about working in Aboriginal communities in Western Australia. This is an alarming issue which would need to be investigated in Western Australia.

The church is evasive at first

When preparing its first article about McAlinden in September 2007, the Newcastle Herald contacted the office of Maitland-Newcastle Bishop Michael Malone but he declined to answer questions about the movements of Father McAlinden.

The Herald also contacted the president of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference, Archbishop Philip Wilson of Adelaide. Wilson was originally a priest in the Maitland-Newcastle diocese and became the diocese's vicar-general (chief administrator). Wilson confirmed to the Herald in late September 2007 that he had been involved with the Father McAlinden matter in the 1980s but declined to give details. A week later, in early October 2007 (after the Herald had begun its McAlinden articles), Archbishop Wilson confirmed in a statement to the Herald that he was aware in 1985 of concerns about Father McAlinden. In 1985, Father Wilson travelled to a Maitland-Newcastle parish at the request Bishop Leo Clarke to "talk to the school authorities after they raised concerns about Father McAlinden".

The Herald sought to interview Archbishop Wilson in person in 2007 about how the church handled the Father McAlinden case but a spokeswoman for Wilson said he was "too busy" to be interviewed. "That's all we really want to say at this stage," the spokeswoman said. She referred any questions to the Maitland-Newcastle diocese.

The church apologises

Publication of the Herald's first McAlinden article on Saturday 29 September 2007 caused a public-relations disaster for the church hierarchy. Six days later, on Friday 5 October 2007, the Maitland-Newcastle Catholic diocese issued a statement, acknowledging the victims of McAlinden and apologising for his actions and "any instances of abuse by church personnel of people in its care".

The diocese confirmed that McAlinden had many victims, but it said that most were not known to the church.

[Comment by Broken Rites: This indicates that the diocese never bothered to find McAlinden's victims or to offer them help.]

Civil action against the diocese

One McAlinden victim told the Newcastle Herald in April 2008 that she was seeking compensation because the church let her down.

"I don't care if I only get one dollar but I feel like they just want us older victims to be silent and go away so they can forget about us and I don't want that to happen," she said.

The woman said she knew of another McAlinden victim who was taking legal action.

"She has a sister who was a victim of McAlinden's as well," she said.

"He liked siblings up to about the age of 12 until they got too old for him."

Protecting the church's image

These documents, the Herald said, show that two bishops (Leo Clarke and Michael Malone) and a future archbishop (Philip Wilson) were involved in managing the Father McAlinden problem.

Bishop Leo Clarke was in charge of the Maitland-Newcastle diocese until 1995, when he was succeeded by Bishop Michael Malone.

Father Philip Wilson was then the secretary of the diocese, and his duties included assisting the bishop in the 1980s and 1990s in matters regarding Father Denis McAlinden.

In 2001 Wilson became the archbishop of Adelaide in South Australia. He also became the chairman of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference. And he has been a member of the church's National Committee on Professional Standards, the group which supervises the management of the Catholic Church's sex-abuse issue throughout Australia.

"One-way ticket to England"

The Herald said that the NSW Police regional command in Newcastle has assigned a group of detectives (Strike Force Lantle) to investigate the church's handling of the McAlinden matter. This strike force has learned that the "solution" to the McAlinden problem was discussed by senior church officials in the early 1990s, the Herald said.

Although McAlinden successfully defended the West Australian police charges, the church took the first step towards removing him from the priesthood in 1993 and discussed sending him from Australia.

Documents obtained by the Newcastle Herald and handed to police show that two years later, in October 1995, senior Australian church officials had roles in an attempted "speedy" secret defrocking as police investigated another Maitland-Newcastle diocesan paedophile priest, Fr Vincent Ryan.

The documents included letters in which McAlinden was assured his "good name would be protected by the confidential nature of this process" and the secret defrocking was "for the good of the church".

Other documents seen by the Herald show a Newcastle region family told a bishop in the early 1950s that McAlinden had sexually assaulted their primary school-aged daughter three times.

The assaults occurred only four years after he arrived in Maitland-Newcastle diocese from Ireland in 1949, aged 26.

The Herald said that a warrant was issued for McAlinden's arrest in 1999 when the woman reported the sexual assaults to police, who were advised by the church that the priest was not in Australia.

Maitland-Newcastle diocese paid the woman more than $130,000 in compensation in 2002. Another McAlinden victim was paid compensation the following year.

Although Catholic church representatives advised repeatedly that they did not know where McAlinden was living from the time the arrest warrant was issued, he died in a church-run facility in Western Australia in late 2005.

The Newcastle Herald said it has seen evidence that the church ordered a psychological evaluation of McAlinden in the late 1980s.

The evaluation was made two years after the Maitland-Newcastle diocese transferred McAlinden from one parish to another after allegations of McAlinden's child sexual abuse, the Herald said.

[Broken Rites is proud of having encouraged the Newcastle Herald to investigate the Catholic Church's cover-up of Father Denis McAlinden.]

• This Broken Rites article was updated on 9 October 2011.