A retired Catholic priest from Melbourne has been charged with the sexual assault of four Aboriginal girls at a West Australian orphanage more than 50 years ago. The case is another unwelcome reminder of Rome’s systemic abuse of Australian children.
Father Allan Mithen, currently 78, was recently arrested in Clifton Hill over the sexual abuse that allegedly occurred when he served as rector at the Wandering Mission between 1965 and 1969. The elderly priest was charged with one count of rape, six counts of indecent assault and a further six counts of indecent dealing with a girl under the age of 13. The four alleged victims were aged between eight and 15 at the time of the attacks.
Detectives from the WA Police’s child abuse squad also charged two former teachers, aged 82 and 83, with sexually abusing Aboriginal girls at the mission, which housed orphans and members of the stolen generation.
The charges against all three men are believed to have stemmed from information provided to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.
A member of the Pallottine order, Father Mithen worked as a priest at several Melbourne parishes until his retirement in 2014.
Some former parishioners were informed at mass last weekend that Father Mithen will face more than a dozen serious charges when he appears before the Perth Magistrates Court next month, via video link.
Father Mithen is understood to have spent more than a decade at the Wandering Mission, about 120 kilometres south-east of Perth. In 1974, Father Mithen was appointed as chaplain to the Aboriginal people of the Catholic Archdiocese of Sydney, before returning to Melbourne.
“And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet colour, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication: And upon her forehead [was] a name written, MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH.” Revelation 17:4, 5.