Philip Wilson’s dead letter day

Fr Frank Brennan in Eureka Street

The show trial of Archbishop Philip Wilson has backfired badly causing hurt to many people, most especially victims of child sexual abuse who thought the law was being rightly applied to put an errant Catholic bishop in the frame.

Wilson was charged under a provision of the New South Wales Crimes Act, section 316, which has hardly ever been used. It’s a provision which was introduced in 1990. It was reviewed by the New South Wales Law Reform Commission in 1999 and comprehensively trashed. Some commissioners thought the provision should be abolished. Others thought it should be retained.  Read on…