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THE NSW Police Integrity Commission Operation Protea report is a damning indictment of the NSW Police Force's handling of child sexual abuse allegations, and a stunning reminder of the extraordinary results achieved by police in the Hunter Region.
In a week that has included the jailing of a notorious Hunter Marist Brother, and shocking diocesan revelations by Newcastle Anglican Bishop Greg Thompson, the findings of the Operation Protea report are grim reading.
NSW police ignored legal advice, over a number of years, that they were breaching section 316 of the NSW Crimes Act by accepting "blind reports" about child sex offences - without offenders' names and details - from institutions including the Catholic Church.
Section 316 relates to concealing or failing to disclose or report serious crimes.
The practice of "blind reporting" went on for years.
It might still be going on.
Certainly the Protea report recommends "an urgent need for a reconsideration of blind reporting".
Police Minister Troy Grant, Police Commissioner Andrew Scipione and the NSW Police Force in general were unavailable for comment on Friday, apart from providing motherhood statements about the importance of child protection.
The Protea report found its scapegoats.
Inspector Beth Cullen was found to have engaged in police misconduct for accepting "blind reports" while sitting on a Catholic Church committee between 1998 and 2005.
Two other former officers, John Heslop and Kim McGee, who once headed the NSW Police Force's child protection enforcement agency, were criticised for failing to respond to legal advice about "blind reports" breaching the law.
But what jumps out from the more than 200 pages of the report is the failure of the NSW Police Force to recognise child sexual abuse as the serious crimes they are.
There were plenty of excuses given for why police accepted a situation where the organisations that produced the offenders controlled the information going to police.
Under challenge, those excuses did not stack up.
Last year, after the release of the NSW Special Commission of Inquiry report into allegations about both the Catholic Church and the NSW Police Force, I wrote that the NSW Police Force was one of the institutions that had failed victims of child sexual abuse and their families.
I have repeated that statement in a submission to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse this week, with one notable exception.
In the Hunter Region police have done an extraordinary job righting the wrongs of the past and holding individuals, and the systems that supported them, to account.
I take the opportunity to commend, in the highest terms, the outstanding work of Detective Sergeant Kristi Faber at Strikeforce Georgiana, and the dedicated officers who work with her.