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	Child Sex Charges Doubled against Priest By Vincent Morelli Courier Mail October 1, 2008 http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,24431087-29277,00.html AN additional 37 child sex abuse charges have been laid against a Catholic priest who allegedly preyed on young boys in the New South Wales Hunter Valley for more than a decade. Reverend Father John Sidney Denham, 66, was already facing 30 similar charges when prosecutors in Newcastle Local Court laid the new charges today. Father Denham was first charged in August with 28 counts of indecent assault of a male, a charge of buggery and one charge of attempted indecent assault of a male, relating to 18 boys at various Catholic parishes in the region. The offences allegedly occurred between the late 1960s and the mid-1980s. The 37 new charges laid against him relate to 13 more boys, whom he allegedly sexually assaulted, indecently assaulted, and solicited or incited to commit an indecent act. The white-haired Father Denham, who has been in custody since his arrest, expressed no emotion during his brief court appearance via videolink. He did not apply for bail and Magistrate Michael Morahan adjourned the matter until November 12 in the same court. "Thirty-seven charges is a lot of charges," the magistrate noted of the added offences. Father Denham was arrested in August at Kensington, in Sydney's east, after a four-month police investigation. At the time of his arrest, officers from Strike Force Georgiana – which was set up to investigate a number of historical sexual assaults against young men in the 1970s to 1980s – warned more charges could follow. Most of the original charges relate to assaults that took place at St Pius X High School at Adamstown in the late 1970s, police have said. Other assaults allegedly occurred in the Charlestown parish in 1980 and the Taree parish in 1981. The new charges against Denham, which involve 13 additional boys, allegedly happened during the same years at the same locations. But one boy was allegedly assaulted from 1968 to 1971 at Granville, while another boy was allegedly assaulted at Taree in 1986.
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