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Allegations
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Sydney: Differences in
the Australian and New Zealand justice systems could prevent two Catholic
clergymen from receiving a fair trial, their lawyer said in a Sydney court
yesterday. The pair, a brother
(70) and a priest (59), were ordered to be extradited to New Zealand by a
magistrate in February. But they have fought
the order, applying for a rehearing in the Federal Court, which started
yesterday. They face 32 sexual
assault charges, relating to their time at Marylands School in Christchurch
in the 1960s and 1970s. They are members of the St John of God Order which
ran the school, catering mostly for boys with intellectual and learning
disabilities. The brother faces 23
charges of indecent assault on a child under 12 years and five counts of
sodomy, while the priest faces four counts of indecent assault upon a child
under 12. Defence counsel Paul
Byrne told Justice Rodney Madgwick that in New Zealand an accused person could
face several complainants in the one trial, while that was not usually
possible in New South Wales. It had also been
proposed that the brother might have to face a joint trial with a former
brother, as it had been alleged both were present at one sexual incident. This would not be
allowed in Australia and raised issues of collusion and concoction in the
evidence, he said. He said there had been
“an orchestrated campaign” to encourage former pupils to come forward with
sexual complaints, raising further the possibility of contaminated evidence. The nature of those
investigations to bring forward complaints was “so fraught with problems that
the risk of contamination was firmly entrenched in the process”, he said. The most recent
allegation dated back to an alleged incident at least 25 years ago and Mr
Byrne submitted it was likely a New Zealand court would grant a permanent
stay on proceedings. He submitted it would
be unjust or oppressive to surrender the men to New Zealand for those
reasons. A third member of the
order, an 83-year-old brother, was discharged in February when Magistrate
Hugh Dillon found the 50-year delay in bringing charges against him was
“extreme”. The hearing is expected
to finish on Friday. |
