The Australian clergyman who shared responsibility for assessing claims by victims of church sex abuse now turns out to have been a serial abuser of little boys himself.
Monsignor Penn Jones, of the Melbourne archdiocese, was first a director and then the chairman of Catholic Church Insurance. CCI helps determine how much money claimants are entitled to.
The Church said it didn’t learn of Jones’ molestations until 2004, nine years after he died.
The complaints against Msgr Jones included that he abused at least three young boys at summer camps in the 1960s, touching them in showers and raping at least one.
Msgr Jones was the school chaplain at Cathedral College in the ’60s, and had regular contact with choirboys when he was based at St Patrick’s Cathedral.
“Had there been knowledge of his abuse at the time of these appointments, they would not have been made,” CCI chief executive Peter Rush told the Herald Sun.
[cartoon by Adam Zyglis via tin-god.com]