Convicted Priest Free Next Year
By Kim Smee
Village Voice
March 4, 2008
http://www.villagevoice.com.au/article/20080304/NWS03/803040305/-1/nws/priest+sentenced+over+sex+crimes
A Lane Cove resident and former St Pius X Chatswood chaplain has been sentenced to four years imprisonment after the Tasmanian Supreme Court found him guilty of three counts of maintaining a sexual relationship with a young person under the age of 17 years.
Roger Michael Bellemore, 72, committed the crimes when he was a teacher and priest at Marist College at Burnie in Tasmania in the 1960s and 70s when the victims, aged between 11 to 13, were boarders there.
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| Sentenced to four years in jail: Roger Bellemore |
In a transcript from the Supreme Court of Tasmania, Justice Ewan Crawford said the man's crimes had "amounted to substantial abuses of the trust that the boys and their parents had in the college and its staff.
"He took advantage of three young persons for his own gratification, using his superior age and personality to have his way with them. Such conduct by a teacher and a priest must be appropriately condemned by the Court's sentence."
However Justice Crawford acknowledged that "A considerable number of testimonials tendered to the Court attest to an unblemished record ever since the crimes for which he is to be sentenced."
Bellemore was given a non-parole period of two years, but his sentence was backdated to April 17, 2007, making him eligible for parole next year.
Bellemore was first convicted in 2006 and was jailed from February to December in that year.
However, an appeal to the Court of Criminal Appeal was upheld and Bellemore was released.
In August last year, Justice Alan Blow dismissed a jury four days into the retrial when inadmissible evidence was given.
He was then found guilty in the Supreme Court in Launceston in early February of this year.
According to research conducted by Broken Rites, a group which helps victims of church-related sexual abuse, Father Bellemore left the Burnie school in 1972 but worked in other states as a teacher, parish priest, counsellor and chaplain until his retirement in 2003.
A spokesperson for St Pius X College in Chatswood confirmed with the Courier that Bellemore was a chaplain at the school from 1997 until 2003.
There were no allegations of misconduct at the school.
Broken Rites reports that when charged in 2004, he was living with the Marist Fathers in Sydney. The July 2007 edition of the annual Australian Catholic Directory gave his address as care of the Marist Fathers community, Mary Street, Hunters Hill, Sydney. In court in 2008, his address was given as a Marist Fathers community in Lane Cove.
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