NZ Herald
May 19 2004

Judge denies helping in paedophile cover-up
by Stuart Dye and NZPA

A former chief district court judge who helped the Catholic Church with media inquiries relating to paedophile priest Alan Woodcock says he did not try to cover up Woodcock's previous sexual offending.

But police say the role played by Judge Peter Trapski, and other aspects of the case, will go under a microscope.

Woodcock, ordained a priest in 1972, was convicted in 1979 of a sex offence against a 17-year-old male.

Despite this, he was appointed a teacher at St Patrick's College in Upper Hutt where some of the offences took place.

Judge Trapski, an old boy of St Patrick's, was consulted by the Catholic Church in 1994 when one of Woodcock's victims went to the media.

A church document says Judge Trapski, who was chair of St Patrick's trust board at the time, advised the church to place "confidential material" about Woodcock into his employment file but within a separate envelope labelled "secret".

Woodcock has pleaded guilty to 21 charges relating to the abuse of 11 boys in the 1970s and 1980s and will be sentenced on June 25.

The church has offered its apologies and regrets after it emerged that it knew of Woodcock's predilection for boys before it made him a teacher.

Judge Trapski said yesterday that he had not been trying to cover up Woodcock's previous offending, but merely trying to avoid breaching a suppression order relating to the case from 1979.

"I was being faced with a report that was about to be released. I looked at the report and thought it was too specific and too fulsome and in particular it was in breach of the 1979 suppression order," he told National Radio.

"It wasn't about downplaying anything. It was saying, 'Yeah, face up to these things, deal with them'."

However, he said he did not advise the school to take abuse claims relating to Woodcock to the police, as the church had already settled with some complainants and he believed going to the police was up to it. Woodcock could not be found at the time.

Judge Trapski said that at the time the church had two filing systems, an open one and a secret one.

When he advised that a letter, labelled "secret", be put in Woodcock's employment file he was trying to get rid of the secret system, but still protect confidential information from people who did not have the proper authority to view it.

Detective Sergeant Murray Porter, who heads the Upper Hutt CIB, said yesterday that he would be looking carefully at the role of Judge Trapski and anyone else involved in the case.

"We need to look at the context of what was said and done to see if there is any criminal responsibility."

A communications adviser to the judiciary, Neil Billington, said no comment would be made because the incident happened after Judge Trapski left the district court bench. He retired in 1989.

The 2004 Law Diary still lists him as Judge Advocate General of the armed forces.

Acting Attorney-General Phil Goff said nothing that had been referred to him suggested any impropriety on the part of Judge Trapski.