A former Australian archbishop sentenced to one year in prison for concealing abuse

The Australian Archbishop Philip Wilson the oldest Catholic priest convicted in a pedophile case, was sentenced Tuesday to 12 months in prison for concealing badual abuse of minors

The ruling states that Wilson will pbad "six months without parole" said a judicial source briefly to Efe adding that the next 14 August, the court will decide whether to He must serve his sentence in prison or under house arrest.

Wilson, 67, was convicted on May 22 in this case and the next day he resigned from his position. functions as Archbishop of Adelaide, although not in office, and Pope Francis appointed an Apostolic Administrator for the Archdiocese of South Australia. is

The religious, who arrived today in silence and dressed in black. the city of Newcastle (Southeast), was charged with failing to report to the police the crimes of the late pedophile James Fletcher committed in the 1970s.

"The entire community is devastated by many ways by decades of abuse and its concealment ", Judge Robert Stone told him at the hearing.

The judge announced that he will weigh the possibility that the religious, facing a maximum sentence of two years deprivation of liberty, serve the sentence under house arrest, according to the local chain ABC

"We made history here in Australia" says out of court Peter Gogarty, victim of badual abuse in the Catholic Church [19659002] "A high representative of the church was held responsible for what we know to be the systematic abuse of children and the concealment of such abuse" agrees Gogarty, became a lawyer for survivors of child-priests.

Nevertheless, Gogarty regretted that the sentence was "somewhat sweet", referring to the punishment of Wilson, who suffers from diabetes, The case against Wilson

The case Against Wilson was not intended not to report the events when they occurred but during a survey conducted earlier this century against the pedophile priest Fletcher, who was charged and convicted for nine crimes of pedophilia and died in jail in 2006.

The two victims of this concealment, Peter Creigh and another who, for legal reasons, was not identified, 1976 to Wilson to tell them about their respective abuses

Then Wilson, who was Fletcher's badistant in the parish of East Maitland, considered the testimony of the false children because he believed that the pederast priest was "a good boy ".

Daniel Feenan, whose testimony was essential to bringing charges against Fletcher, told reporters that if Wilson had made the allegations in 1976, the pedophile priest would never again "touch"

Stone JA pointed out in his decision that Wilson "did not provide reasons why he had not investigated the complaints" and considered that the reason was to protect the Church.