Inquiry member ‘did not hand in file’

THE chairwoman of the Catholic Church’s internal inquiry into paedophile priests was making no comment yesterday on reports a member of her team once failed to turn over a crucial complaints file in another child sex abuse investigation.

It is understood retired judge Gillian Hussey is waiting to discuss the matter with commission member Robert Bunting, who was criticised by the Hughes Inquiry into the Kincora Boys Home in Belfast in 1986.

Judge Hussey personally appointed Mr Bunting, along with five other legal and childcare professionals, to the commission last month and he has been attending the group’s meetings as they work to thrash out terms of references for the inquiry.

A highly-experienced social worker, Mr Bunting was an assistant director of family and child care services in the North during the 1970s when the Kincora scandal was brewing.

He inherited a file of complaints made against a member of staff at the home, Joseph Mains, when he became assistant director in 1973.

It would later emerge the file had been withheld from a police investigation two years earlier before Mr Bunting took over responsibility for it.

Mr Bunting reviewed the file in 1973 but concluded the complaints, the most recent of which had been made in 1971, had not been adequately investigated and could not be substantiated.

But his judgment was questioned by the Committee of Inquiry into Children’s Homes and Hostels which was set up after it emerged there was a series of complaints against a number of Kincora staff and that Joseph Mains had persistently re-offended.

Mains would later be convicted of a number of sexual assaults and receive a six-month jail sentence while two other staff members were also jailed.

A spokesman for Judge Hussey said last night she was not making any comment for the moment.