The Altar Boys by Suzanne Smith

Author:Suzanne Smith
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: ABC Books
Published: 2020-07-27T00:00:00+00:00

In November 2004, Helen Keevers had volunteered to conduct a survey across the diocese, and Malone had enabled her to do this. It was completed in April 2005, and its key recommendation was the establishment of a coordinated diocesan response to child protection managed by a new child protection unit. It was called the Diocesan Child Protection and Professional Conduct Unit (DCPPCU).

Around this time, the diocese received a Towards Healing complaint by a victim who had attended St Pius X High School. The priest named in this complaint was Father John Denham.

Helen investigated Denham’s status within the diocese, and she learned that he had been supported by the Maitland Clergy Fund to the tune of $874 per month and the use of a clergy-funded car. This suggested he was technically ‘on leave’ from the Maitland-Newcastle Diocese since he’d left in 1986. Thousands of dollars had been paid to support him over the years, in stark contrast to how Glen Walsh had been treated.

Not only had Monsignor Hart controlled the Maitland Clergy Fund for many years, but he had also taken a complaint report on Denham from a student at Waverley College in 1994.

In November 1994, Father Brian Lucas, then the chancellor of the Archdiocese of Sydney, had sent a letter to Denham instructing him to ‘perform no public ministry’. But Denham remained a priest, and Lucas didn’t complete any formal procedures to defrock him or to remove his faculties (ability to perform ceremonies such as mass), despite the gravity of the offences. Lucas would go on to be a key figure in arranging the informal MOU between the NSW Church and the Police.

Also in 1994, Denham was counselled by a psychologist in relation to inappropriate sexual activity on his dismissal from Waverley College. At the time he told the psychologist that his inappropriate behaviour ‘was a means to comfort his victims’.1 He told another psychologist that he’d ‘engaged in the sexual behaviours as he felt that behaviour was what he would have wanted as a boy . . .’2

Helen wondered why Hart and Clarke hadn’t acted to remove Denham from ministry (that is, remove his faculties) that year and also request that the Vatican laicise him. Laicisation can only be approved by the Pope. Why hadn’t they started that procedure with the Vatican? She reported back to the bishop that this meant Denham was still technically ‘on leave’ from the Maitland-Newcastle Diocese. This was despite his conviction in 2000, which hadn’t yet been reported in the media, for indecently assaulting a fourteen-year-old boy.

In 2005, in accordance with the law, Malone notified the NSW Ombudsman of the Towards Healing complaint about Denham. But it was later revealed that, back in 2004, Malone had also informed the Ombudsman of an issue involving Denham.3

Denham had been convicted of child sex offences in 2000 in a court of law, but it doesn’t seem that Malone then immediately notified the Ombudsman that Denham was an offender. In fact, it seemingly took four years for Malone

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