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Demand for Church inquiry as priest admits using prostitutes

The conduct of the Catholic priest at the centre of the Angelika Kluk affair last night led to calls for the Church to launch a full inquiry into what happened at St Patrick's Church.

It emerged during the trial that Father Gerry Nugent claimed to have had sex with Angelika, and the Church itself admitted he had needed counselling for a sexual indiscretion - blamed on an alcohol problem - with a parishioner 14 years ago.

But the full extent of Nugent's shocking behaviour yesterday emerged in a newspaper interview in which he admitted picking up prostitutes and bringing them back to his church for "sexual fumblings".

In the interview, Nugent claimed to have had a series of sexual liaisons with parishioners, some of them married. And he repeated the court claim that he had had sex with Angelika but that it was "only once".

Malcolm Savidge, the Labour MP for Aberdeen North, who was actively involved in representing victims of abuse at the city's Nazareth House Catholic children's home, said the Church should re-examine its policies for dealing with priests such as Father Nugent.

"Trying to look after the reputation of the Church, rather than the welfare of people, simply leads to the Church being brought into even greater disrepute in the longer term," he said.

MSP Margaret Mitchell, the Scottish Conservatives' former justice spokeswoman at Holyrood, said the Church should look at how Nugent was able to have such a different public persona to his private life without senior clerics knowing. "The Church needs to look at the whole issue," she said.

She added it should also examine how Angelika's killer, Peter Tobin, was allowed to be employed even though he had a conviction for the serious sexual assault of two teenagers.

"If Tobin somehow slipped through the net then we need to know why. This whole area needs to be tightened up."

Full story at Scotland on Sunday.