Australian archbishop found guilty of concealing child sex abuses
Canberra, May 22: An Australian court has found Catholic Archbishop Philip Wilson guilty of concealing child sexual abuse cases, media reported on Monday. He faces a maximum jail term of upto two years.
Wilson, the archbishop of Adelaide, becomes the most senior Catholic in the world to be charged and convicted of the offence, the BBC reported.
He was found to have covered up the abuse of altar boys by a paedophile priest in New South Wales in the 1970s. Wilson will be sentenced in June.
During his trial, Wilson denied any memory of being told about the abuse by two of the boys.
He told the Newcastle court he had not been aware of priest James Fletcher's abuse, which took place while he was an assistant priest in Maitland, the BBC report added.
Fletcher was convicted of nine child sexual abuse charges in 2004 and died in jail in 2006.
One of his victims, Peter Creigh, told the court he had described the abuse to Wilson in detail when he was 15, five years after the abuse, the BBC reported.
Magistrate Robert Stone rejected Wilson's assertion that he could not remember the conversation and said he found Creigh to be a reliable witness.
The priest knew "what he was hearing was a credible allegation and the accused wanted to protect the Church and its reputation", said Magistrate Stone.
Wilson's lawyers had attempted four times to get the case thrown out after he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, the BBC said.
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Pakistan reports two more polio cases; Total tally now 52
ISLAMABAD: At least two more cases of poliovirus were reported in Pakistan, taking the number of infections to 52 so far this year, a report said on Friday.
“The Regional Reference Laboratory for Polio Eradication at the National Institute of Health has confirmed the detection of two more wild poliovirus type 1 (WPV1) cases in Pakistan," an official statement said.
The fresh infections — a boy and a girl — were reported from the Dera Ismail Khan district of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province.
“Genetic sequencing of the samples collected from the children is underway," the statement read. Dera Ismail Khan, one of the seven polio-endemic districts of southern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, has reported five polio cases so far this year.
Of the 52 cases in the country this year, 24 are from Balochistan, 13 from Sindh, 13 from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and one each from Punjab and Islamabad.
There is no cure for polio. Only multiple doses of the oral polio vaccine and completion of the routine vaccination schedule for all children under the age of five can keep them protected.
