SYDNEY, Aug 22 (AFP) - The Catholic church came under fire Thursday over leaks of confidential information designed to discredit allegations of sexual abuse against Australia's top Catholic cleric, Archbishop George Pell.

A spokeswoman for Pell denied that church officials were behind the leaks, which detailed the criminal past of the man who made the allegations and suggested he was trying to extort money from the church.

Pell vehemently denied the accusation that he repeatedly fondled the man -- then a 12-year-old boy -- at a Catholic summer camp near Melbourne in 1961.

At a hastily arranged press conference on Tuesday, Pell then announced that he was temporarily stepping down pending a church inquiry into the affair.

On the same day, details began emerging in the media about the identity and background of Pell's accuser, who had been promised confidentiality by church officials.

The information included the man's record of more than 40 convictions for drug abuse and other crimes and suggestions that he only came forward with his accusations after Pell publicly admitted in late May that he had offered money to other victims of priestly abuse.

On Thursday, the leading support group for victims of sexual abuse by clergy accused people from the Catholic church of leaking the information in a bid to vilify Pell's accuser.

"We suspect this was leaked by the church and I think it's disgusting," Chris MacIsaac, spokeswoman for the support group Broken Rites, told Nampa-AFP.

"This is information that the church had and it has nothing to do with the complaint that has been made," she said, adding that releasing such personal information would discourage other victims from coming forward.

"A big percentage of the people who come to us have criminal records," she said. "A big problem for people abused as children is that they are not accepting of authority and this leads to problems."

"If there was nothing wrong in someone's life, that might be grounds for suspecting their stories," she said.

A friend of the alleged victim told The Age newspaper in Melbourne the man was "very angry" and "in shock" over the leaks and also believed they came from the church.

The spokeswoman for Pell said "we're unsure where these details came from".

"We just don't know, but it's not from the church," she told Nampa-AFP.

MacIsaac said the man first approached Broken Rites with the Pell allegations two years ago, contradicting suggestions he came forward only after the archbishop revealed in a televised interview that he had offered cash to a family whose two daughters were abused by a priest.

The man declined to go to the police at the time and did not come forward again until June when he contacted the church's National Committee for Professional Standards, which handles sex abuse charges.

MacIsaac said the committee had the man sign a statement detailing his allegations, but then took no further action until he contacted reporters at The Age, which began investigating the case.

"Then the church went into damage control and Pell held his press conference to declare his innocence and announce an inquiry to prove his innocence," MacIsaac said.

The Age confirmed Thursday that Pell's resignation and launch of the inquiry against him came a day after it submitted a series of questions to the archbishop about the abuse allegations.

In another development, several Australian newspapers reported that other men who attended the same Catholic summer camp on Phillip Island in the 1960s had come forward with allegations of sexual abuse by clergy, but not Pell.

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