Organisers had been expecting 150 people, but instead a rowdy crowd of about 1,000 has turned up to a meeting on the presence of convicted pedophile Dennis Ferguson in their Brisbane community. 

Police Minister Judy Spence and Acting Police Commissioner Kathy Rynders were shouted down by the crowd at the meeting in Carbrook, a suburb on Brisbane's southern fringes, last night. 

Ferguson is being housed on a property at Carbrook, where taxpayers are paying $1,000 a day for a church group to supervise him. 

The 60-year-old convicted sex offender, freed last week after Judge Botting said he would not get a fair trial in Queensland on new child sex charges, has already been run out of a community at Miles, in the state's south. 

Standing Ovation For Cop's Protest 

meanwhile ….

The Archbishop of Sydney, Cardinal George Pell, yesterday denied he covered up abuse by a Sydney priest, Father Terence Goodall, as new claims emerged about what he knew of the priest's history of sexual assault.

Documents aired by the ABC's Lateline last night showed Cardinal Pell received a church psychosexual report in July 2003 that said Father Goodall had also abused a 16-year-old girl, propositioned two seminary students, invited altar boys to strip naked while swimming and had consensual sex with another man in 1996.

At a news conference yesterday, Cardinal Pell refused to stand aside or resign over his treatment of a 2003 sexual assault claim by a Lismore man, Anthony Jones. Church documents show Cardinal Pell rejected Mr Jones's assault claims despite advice from a church investigator that said they should be substantiated. He also told Mr Jones that no other allegations of sexual assault had been made against Father Goodall. But on the same day Cardinal Pell wrote to another victim upholding his claims against the priest.

Cardinal Pell did not inform Mr Jones of his mistake despite a July 2003 church report that Father Goodall was guilty of other assaults, had a "lack of victim empathy" and was likely to reoffend.

Cardinal Pell said yesterday he had not contacted Mr Jones after realising he had misrepresented the investigator's findings, but he considered the matter closed.

He said "there was no cover-up". His letter was "badly worded and a mistake", "an innocent error" and an "overstatement".

My Innocent Error: Pell's Abuse Defence