Brennan is being enormously dishonest.  No abuser ever confessed to civil authorities after going to confession.  Brennan knows that.  This is about power.  Brennan, like all the many clerical villains who aided and abetted the rape do children is only interested in protecting the church's power.  And his claim he was shocked by the revelations of abuse, another enormous lie.  The abuse in Australia was so widespread there is no chance a prominent churchman like this one was unaware of it.  I'd be tempted to compare this priest with some animal or insect, but no bug is as loathsome.