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A “BROWN envelope” shown to the Royal Commission has conflicted with repeated evidence from solicitor Keith Allen that Newcastle Anglican church figures dealing with priest sex abuse cases did not know the identities of the people involved.
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In another dramatic day of evidence at Newcastle Court House, Mr Allen was forced to repeatedly defend his assertion that he and other members of a “brown envelope” committee dealt with as many as 27 cases inside the envelopes without knowing anything more than very broad outlines of each case.
Questioned by the commission’s chairman, Justice Peter McClellan, and counsel assisting, Naomi Sharp, Mr Allen continued to insist they were just “plain brown envelopes”.
He did so even after one envelope was displayed to the commission that had a “confidential” stamp and three typed labels with spaces for information including the “complainant”, the “respondent”, the date of lodgement and a “record of access” showing who had accessed the file.
When Mr Allen kept saying the envelopes he saw were blank, Justice McClellan said: “Mr Allen, what you’re saying just doesn’t sound believable.”
Mr Allen said: “I am telling you the truth.”
Justice McClellan asked Mr Allen if he was “giving that answer to avoid being charged with a criminal offence”? Mr Allen said he was not.
As he was on Monday, Mr Allen was questioned about file notes kept by the diocese’s business manager, John Cleary, which contained substantial detail of child sex abuse allegations that Mr Allen and others had been unable to recall in evidence.
One file note recorded Mr Allen as saying his wife, psychiatrist Sandra Smith, had given two days of evidence to the commission in Sydney on a matter unrelated to the diocese. Mr Allen was quoted as saying he had “done his best to ‘fix’ Sandra Smith’s statement”. Questioned by Justice McClellan, he denied saying such words and had “no recollection” of telling Mr Cleary he needed to “spend a day” with him to prepare a strategy to handle the royal commission.
Tuesday’s hearing returned to a church register that was instrumental in the collapse of a 2001 child abuse case against a priest CKC when it appeared to show he was not where the prosecution had said he was.
The commission heard that the relevant page of the register appeared to have been altered in an at least four places, in contrast with the rest of the book, which had very few changes.
Mr Allen denied altering it and denied trying to frustrate the diocese’s recent investigation of the CKC case.