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	$500 'Insult' to Victim By James Campbell Herald Sun June 1, 2008 http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,23789279-661,00.html A PRIEST convicted of the indecent assault of a teenage girl has been fined only $500. The Catholic Church acknowledged Father Adelrick D'Cruz abused five other girls from the same extended family, but then asked if they minded if he held a mass for their relative. D'Cruz, of Clayton South, was convicted on May 22 of indecent assault. He admitted attacking a 17-year-old girl who sought his help when he was a priest in Victoria's northeast in 1984. The teenager went to St Joseph's Church, in Benalla, to ask for help because she missed her bus home. D'Cruz, then in his mid-50s, indecently assaulted her. In sentencing him at Shepparton County Court, Justice Frank Shelton said the crime was a "gross breach of trust and a complete negation of your vocation as a Catholic priest". But he said D'Cruz had "some remorse". Justice Shelton fined him $500 and imposed a two-year good behaviour bond. The decision has been criticised as an insult to the girl and other sex abuse victims. Dr Caroline Taylor, a Ballarat University expert on child sex abuse, said the fine was "ludicrous". D'Cruz is listed in the Catholic directory for Sandhurst, but Bishop Joseph Grech, the church's most senior representative in the diocese, said he had been suspended. Bishop Grech admitted this week he had apologised in 2006 over alleged attacks on five girls in the 1970s and 1980s. But a meeting with the victims ended in acrimony when the bishop asked if they objected to D'Cruz saying mass at an aunt's 80th birthday. Bishop Grech said he was just trying to gauge their feelings. "I was just asking how they felt about it," he said. The father of two of the victims said he was appalled. "They had just said they thought the guy was a pedophile, but then they wanted to let him say mass at a family gathering," he said. The five women - three sisters from one family and two of their cousins - told the church in 2005 that they had been abused by the priest over many years, but didn't complain to police.
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