Murder squad detective lands top church job

BY CHRISTINA WHITE
A FOR .1411R high-ranking murder squad detective with Scotland Yard was this week appointed to the child protection unit of the most important Catholic diocese in England and Wales.
Peter Turner. 53, retired from his post as a Detective Inspector with London's Metropolitan Police last Friday to take up his new job on Monday as the child protection officer of the Archdiocese of Westminster.
Besides top-level involvement on a number of gruesome murder inquiries in the capital, Mr Turner was formerly responsible for reviewing the Met's child protection procedures and was head of the child protection team in Newham. East London.
His new appointment. which carries a salary of almost £30,000, comes just a month after the Church appointed former highflying NSPCC official Eileen Shearer as head of the Catholic Office for the Protection of Children and Vulnerable Adults, a position which carries a salary of about £80,000 a year.
Both appointments were made as a result of Lord Nolan's review last year of child protection procedures in the Church.
Cardinal Cormac MurphyO'Connor, Archbishop of Westminster, said: "Peter brings with him a wealth of experience after a very distinguished career in the Metropolitan Police. The Church is absolutely committed to the very highest standards of child protection and 1 am confident that in Peter and Eileen we have at the diocesan and national level two people who will help us attain those standards and more,"
The Nolan Review was launched by Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor in the wake of intense media criticism in July 2000 over his handling of paedophile priest Michael Hill years earlier when Bishop of Arundel and Brighton.
The only conviction of a priest for sex offences in the Archdiocese of Westminster in the last seven years involved Fr Michael Hobbs, a priest in Hertfordshire and a homosexual who was sentenced to three years in jail for indecent assault against a 15-year-old boy which he denied.
Jim Richards, the director of the Catholic Children's Society (Westminster) and Mr Turner's new boss, admitted that there was unease about the creation of a huge child protection bureaucracy in the Church.
"There is understandable anxiety amongst priests," he said. "When people begin to explore and discuss child protection they feel anxious — you are talking about something that is frankly horrific to contemplate."
But he added: "Peter Turner brings with him a wealth of relevant experience. He was clearly a highly respected member of the Metropolitan Police and is keen to use his knowledge for the benefit of the Church."
Mr Turner, who also has experience of inquiries into care homes in London, insists he will not be conducting "witch-hunts".
He said: "I've not come here to hunt down paedophiles. I'm not coming in on some sort of witchhunt. I see my role as ensuring the safety of children and vulnerable adults in the Church.
"There have been some problems in the past which have been well-documented. But we don't want to hide it and pretend it didn't happen."
Miss Shearer said the appointment of Mr Turner demonstrated that the Church was taking the problem of child abuse "seriously".
She said child abuse was rife in society. "Its prevalence is far greater than people appreciate and the same holds true for the Church," she said.
"There's no reason to believe that abuse within the Church is any different from any other setting. People in the past have held the mistaken belief that keeping quiet is less damaging to the Church but there are very clear guidelines now that any allegation should be passed to the statutory agencies.
"I am absolutely clear that proper procedures and policies protect children and everyone that works with children in the Church. They will receive far greater protection from false allegations if proper procedures are in place."
Margaret Jervis. the legal affairs adviser to the British False Memory Society, said she was worried that the emerging child protection bureaucracy "would not just be about protecting children but finding culprits".
She said: "Since the Church is dedicated to referring allegations of abuse to the police, it's not clear what the appointment of a former senior detective in child protection is for.
"There could be a raised expectation effect of routing out more offenders than is warranted by the facts — particularly when dealing with historical claims.
"Is his work and that of the Church child protection coordinator [Miss Shearer] to be independently monitored by non-child protection professionals?
"Experience around the world shows that this is essential to avoid the pitfalls of mass false claims and widespread injustice."
Mr Turner is married to a Catholic and is a governor of
Brentwood Ursuline Convent school for girls in Essex. He has two adult children.
A total of 28 priests out of an overall figure of 5.000 in England and Wales have been convicted in the last seven years of sexual crimes dating back the last 30 years.
The Home Office says the names of 15.000 people are on the national Sex Offenders Register.