ONE
of Australia's worst pedophile priests was brought from Ireland at the
request of his former Catholic order, which warned he was difficult,
bad-tempered and should be kept away from other people. Documents tendered to the NSW Special Commission of Inquiry into church child abuse, which begins hearing closing submissions today, also reveal Denis McAlinden went on to commit dozens of sexual crimes against adults and children over several decades.
In 1949, the then Redemptorist provincial in Limerick, John Treacy, wrote to the Bishop of Maitland in the NSW Hunter Valley asking if "there be any possibility of taking one of our students".
"You will very justly say then: 'What is wrong with him, so why do you not wish to retain him? Well, his difficulty is community life . . . he is a bit hard to get on with in ordinary life. His temper is difficult," the letter states.
While he did not specifically mention sexual crimes, the late Father Treacy recommended McAlinden "for the secular priesthood, in which he will have to live in that close association (as) we have to live with one another".
A subsequent letter, thanking the Australian bishop for taking on McAlinden, describes the priest: "Poor fellow, he has wonderful qualities in many ways, but living in close community is not one of them."
McAlinden was appointed assistant priest at a parish in the NSW Hunter Valley in 1953, the documents show.
Later that year, he repeatedly raped an 11-year-old girl who was a member of the local church.
The commission has heard that successive bishops of Maitland, as well as other senior Catholic officials, knew McAlinden was abusing children, but this information was not passed to police at the time.
In another previously unseen letter, from 1958, the Bishop of Maitland wrote to the papal representative in Australia saying that he could not recommend McAlinden for missionary work in Africa "for reasons which I prefer not to state".
Instead, the priest was able to move between different parishes, states and countries, abusing children in NSW, Western Australia and New Zealand, the commission heard, as well as spending several years in The Philippines and Papua New Guinea.
In 2009, the then bishop Michael Malone wrote to the Archbishop of Mount Hagen in PNG about McAlinden, saying: "I have discovered he was a sexual predator preying on young girls mainly.
"There are numerous people coming forward here claiming to have been abused by him . . . There is every chance that he may have offended in your diocese also."
A current employee of the Diocese of Maitland-Newcastle, Maureen O'Hearn, told the commission she had spoken to 28 of McAlinden's victims, abused between 1949 and 1987.
The Australian understands the true number may be far higher.
McAlinden died in 2005 without being charged by NSW Police.
Commissioner Margaret Cunneen SC is expected to report by February next year.