The NSW Police Force has painted whistleblower Peter Fox as a troublemaker who passed on confidential documents to journalists to undermine the sex abuse investigation he was excluded from in 2010 in the hope he could write a book about it.
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Wayne Roser SC, the barrister representing several senior police, told the Commission of Inquiry Inspector Fox asked Newcastle Herald journalist Joanne McCarthy to amend a six-page report on his sexual abuse investigations before he passed it on to his superiors.
“You drafted this report and then you sent it off to your friend Ms McCarthy and asked her to amend it,” Mr Roser put to Inspector Fox who said the “vast majority” of information in the document came from the journalist.
“Ms McCarthy knew a hell of a lot more than what was in my report,” Inspector Fox said.
Mr Roser put Inspector Fox through a hard line of interrogation on his fourth day of evidence, demanding to know why confidential police documents were given to Ms McCarthy.
Inspector Fox said both he and Ms McCarthy wanted investigations to look at a number of Maitland-Newcastle clergy, not just priest Denis McAlinden.
“That’s why I decided to put myself and my family through hell, to make a complaint,” said Mr Fox who believed Strike Force Lantle was not intent on investigating paedophilia links within the church.
The inquiry heard Inspector Fox appeared on ABC TV’s Lateline program the night his open letter to NSW Premier Barry O’Farrell calling for a royal commission into the matter was published.
Mr Roser suggested Inspector Fox’s interview with Lateline presenter Tony Jones was scripted.
He read out emails from Inspector Fox to ABC journalist Suzanne Smith asking to drip feed information saying “it will only give us longer coverage”.
Inspector Fox asked Ms Smith: “Please don’t lose sight of our objective for a good quick story.”
But Mr Roser suggested Inspector Fox wanted a quick story for a book that he had been writing for the previous 12 months.
The inspector denied his answers were produced or that he had written a book. He said victims, their support groups and journalists had a strategy in delivering pressure to politicians to force a royal commission.
The inquiry, that is concentrating on two priests – serial sex offender Father Denis McAlinden and convicted paedophile Father James Fletcher, both now dead – and the circumstances in which Inspector Fox was asked to stop probing certain matters, will continue until next Friday.
Superintendent Charlie Haggart, an officer who attended the 2010 meeting in which Inspector Fox was ordered to cease investigations, has been excused from giving evidence.
