The Catholic church has successfully used the death of a known paedophile priest to permanently halt a civil claim by two Indigenous survivors, one of whom is dying of cancer.supreme court ruled on Wednesday that the church could no longer receive a fair trial due to the death of assistant priest David Joseph Perrett, which, along with the deaths of other key witnesses,The church won the case despite allegations it had more than three decades to investigate Perrett’s past, but did nothing.
The two plaintiffs alleged they were abused by Perrett on a camping trip to Georges Creek in 1976 while they lived on an Aboriginal mission in Armidale.According to the, this should have made it clear to the Armidale diocese that it would face future civil action for Perrett’s alleged crimes.
The court also rejected a suggestion that the church should have sought to obtain information from Perrett after 2017, when police charged him with abusing the two plaintiffs.“The difficulty with that proposition is that Father Perrett was no longer part of the diocese or acting as a priest at the time,” the court ruled. “He had been charged with serious criminal offences and retained his own solicitors.
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