How to get promoted in a police force without ever having to risk your ass fighting criminals:

1. Sit down comfortably in front of a computer with an internet connection.

2. Open a chat program and run a spoof webcam driver that just plays a 30-minute loop of a young girl typing and scratching her nose.

3. Start sending sexy messages to everyone in the chat room.

4. If anyone replies, string him or her along, pushing the conversation into progressively more explicit subjects. Eventually you'll find one that goes far enough, if you push his buttons right.

5. Announce to the world that you have just caught a dangerous criminal that was trying "cyber-rape" and bask in the admiration of everyone who doesn't have a clue about the internet or about how children are actually abused in the real world.

With some luck, after a few promotions, you might even make a successful transition into politics, which will allow you to expand your contribution to society by completely ignoring the millions of children actually being exploited all over the world and allowing the people running molester protection programs (ex., Mr. J. Ratzinger) to travel freely through your country.

mr huh? - the things you attribute to the church are performed by its minions. the church has endured for 2000 years by shedding blood in the name of its deity and yet it teaches that it is evil to do so! durrr..
it also discourages personal responsibility, discourages people from challenging authority, takes money from its congregation while its senior management live in obscene luxury! i could go on but im bored now.

wake up and smell the &£$@!!!

Unless "grooming" has a different meaning in Australian English, I don't understand what the actual crime is. But it's stranger than that. How does one groom via webcam?!

So, unless "grooming" has a meaning of which I am unaware, this priest is being accused of helping little Sally fix her hair or do her make-up via the internet. And, while strange, it shouldn't be a crime. I know here in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania it isn't.

The media have made a big deal about pedophile priests, as if there is somehow the identity of the molester makes the crime worse. Sorry, folks; the sexual exploitation of children is messed up enough, irrespective of the offender's profession.

And for goodness sake, people, stop these false generalizations. So some priests are pedophiles...that means you punish the priests. If some bishops wrongly try to cover it up, punish them, too. But stop abstracting from their and making baseless accusations against the whole Church. It's both immoral and intellectually weak.

Mr. Farrell, the Roman Catholic Church has endured for almost two thousand years. It's faced evil from both within and without. It feeds the hungry, clothes the poor, heals the sick, and tends to the spiritual needs of billions. What have you done?

anyone who leaves their kids in church unsupervised is asking for trouble!

That priest is bad news, and the Church doesn't need priests like that. Still, if we are serious about protecting children, then we should do a lot more as a society. We need public censorship from violence and pornography, to protect our children.

...I don't think people place enough importance on grooming children these days. Cleanliness is next to godliness, you know.

you don't go to jail for pedophilia. Not to mention that an adult male 'grooming' a 13 year old girl is pretty far away from pedophile behaviour; She's not even a child, only a minor.

Maybe the police aren't that stupid, but I wouldn't say the same for commenters who didn't realize that was a joke :)

"Apparently Father Robert Fuller, 54, used a webcam as part of his Internet campaign so it is not clear how he failed to spot the difference between a teenaged girl and some rather older coppers."

They use actresses (who are of a decent age) and dress them up to look as young as possible. There was an interesting article a few years back on it.

I think that Parramatta Inspector Blue Knacker is having a lend of you.
The Priest is a moron though.