ON HIS EPIC Odyssian journey to the superior position of Attorney General of the State of Western Australia, Jim McGinty stopped off at a Catholic Seminary for a year or two. That’s a place where they instruct Christian Brothers in the art of their trade. Jim obviously was not happy there so thankfully for this State he moved on and ever upwards. Meantime, Jim’s sister, Susan, became a Nun, Catholic of course. Sue graduated and practiced her trade as a Nun in Victoria Park, WA. Unbeknown to these two devoted Christians, a young man, Anthony Patrick McMahon, was weaving his way through the ravings of past clerics on his own journey to sainthood via priesthood in the esteemed Catholic Church. Fate reared its ugly head and someone directed him to report to the Kwinana district for duty in the local Parish.
Yes folks, romance blossomed and the Priest and the Nun found love. Not in God but within themselves. They married, iterated a couple of mea culpa’s to another member of the cloth and were forgiven and have since dedicated their lives to study and the protection of children in this hard world of ours. You would think that this rare and humbling great love story would spontaneously encourage our Attorney General, General Jimbo himself, to clean up paedophile crimes of the Christian type firmly and finally, once and for all. It is a New Era of Zero Tolerance for Child Abusers. Jimbo now has the opportunity to set real rules for eradicating the problem, taking the solution from the hands of the perpetrators, in this instance, the Church itself.
Now, Jim is a cousin of mine but it could not be alleged that we are close. No, not close at all.
Enter, Mr Leo McVeigh, whose parents, by the good graces of a Kwinana relative of the Attorney General, were introduced to the Priest and the Nun.
Say, what? The Priest and the Nun.
Whence, according to State Hansard reports, the young Leo, then about five years old, was left in the clutches of the continuing scourge of the Catholic cloisters, the sadistic and relentless sexual abuse of children by Christian monsters. Same kind. Same Church. Same consequences. Same cover-up. New victim.
Scaley and Tommy Tantrum, bleed on in Hell, now joined by Leo McVeigh in his own living nightmare.
The ugly history of Leo McVeigh’s case makes your stomach churn. A devout Catholic, he approached the Church in January 1998 with the appalling information that as a young child he had allegedly been raped by a former priest, Anthony Patrick McMahon. He received counselling from the church between January and September 1998. On 14 October 1998 he made a formal complaint to the professional standards resource group of the church outlining what had happened to him. This was raised in State Parliament on 12 May 2004 by the Shadow Attorney General, Ms Sue Walker. She told Parliament that she had a copy of that complaint. Leo McVeigh had been dealing with Mr Des O’Sullivan, the director of professional standards. “Mr McVeigh said that in his presence Mr O’Sullivan telephoned Jackie Ellis of the child abuse unit on 23 October 1998. The police said, by and large, that they would take a statement in four to six weeks. After six weeks Mr McVeigh started ringing the child abuse unit and was just fobbed off. About three and a half months later, O’Sullivan recorded a meeting with then Assistant Commissioner Tim Atherton in the presence of David Caporn and John Wibberley. On 19 March 1999 Mr O’Sullivan had a further meeting with John Wibberley.”