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The Catholic Bishop of the Australian Defence Force is involved in court proceedings, charged by police with a child-sex offence dating back to 1969. Bishop Max Davis, now 68, is believed to be the most senior Catholic clergyman (and the first bishop) to be charged by Australian police with a child-sex offence. (Article updated 28 January 2015.)

On half a dozen occasions during 2013 and 2014, a Queensland magistrate granted an adjournment to a retired Catholic priest, Father Dermot Casey, who had been charged with sexual offences against ten children. The defence lawyers kept producing medical certificates saying that the priest (aged 78 in 2014) was not well enough to come to court.  Now Father Casey has died, thus defeating his victims. (Article updated  27 August 2014.)

From 1964 to 1994, Father Richard Cattell was a Catholic priest in parishes around Sydney. A boy who was sexually abused by Cattell in 1973 eventually told  police (twenty years later) about the abuse. This resulted in Cattell being jailed in 1994 after pleading guilty. This 1994 court case, researched by Broken Rites, demonstrates that church victims should report sexual crimes to the civil authorities, not to the offending organisation (the church). (Article updated 7 March 2014.)

A Catholic boys' secondary school, St Pius X College in Chatswood, on Sydney's North Shore, issued a circular on Wednesday afternoon, 4 March 2015, saying that a Christian Brother from Chatswood has been placed on leave because he is facing court charges re offences allegedly committed at Goulburn in south-western New South Wales in the 1980s. Broken Rites has obtained a copy of the circular, which reads as follows.

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The Catholic Church sheltered Father John Stockdale for 31 years in parishes in northern Victoria, Australia, while he committed sexual crimes against boys. Parishioners complained about Father Stockdale being a danger to children but these warnings were ignored. The church "just didn't want to know" about Stockdale, victims say. Publicly, Father Stockdale upheld the strict morality which the church imposed on all lay Catholics. Privately, Father Stockdale was going to a gay club to have casual sex. On New Year's Eve in 1995, Fr Stockdale was found dead in a sex cubicle at the "Club 80" gay venue in Melbourne. The church then gave him a pious funeral, but (with help from Broken Rites) the church's hypocrisy about Stockdale was soon exposed. In 2018, Broken Rites is doing some further research on Stockdale. (By a Broken Rites researcher)