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	Father John Sidney Denham Pleads Guilty to Multiple Sex Offences against Boys Broken Rites July 8, 2009 http://brokenrites.alphalink.com.au/nletter/page167-denham.html An Australian Catholic priest, Father John Sidney Denham, has pleaded guilty to sexually abusing dozens of boys on separate occasions in the 1970s and 80s. John Sidney Denham was originally charged with 134 child sex offences relating to 39 boys in Sydney, Newcastle, the Hunter Valley and the New South Wales mid-north coast. The 134 charges, including buggery and multiple counts of indecent assault and sexual assault, spanned from 1968 to 1986. The earliest alleged offences occurred while Denham was training to be a priest. On 8 July 2009 he pleaded guilty in the Newcastle Local Court to 29 offences, with the bulk of the other charges withdrawn. Most of the victims were molested while they were students at St Pius X High School at Adamstown in Newcastle. Denham was charged by Strikeforce Georgiana, which had laid more than 170 charges against three priests and another member of the clergy over the previous 12 months. Denham, who is already in jail on remand, is scheduled to be sentenced on a future date. Background Broken Rites began researching Father John Denham in the 1990s. Denham (date of birth 8 September 1942) belonged to the Newcastle-Maitland Diocese, north of Sydney. He first arrived at the diocese as a deacon in the Mayfield parish in 1972 and moved to the Singleton parish (St Patrick's) in 1973. He became a teacher at St Pius X Catholic High School at Adamstown, Newcastle, where he resided in parish quarters. Many of the victims in the Denham charges were students at this school. About 1980 he moved to the Charlestown parish (in the Newcastle urban area). In the early 1980s, according to a listing in the annual "Australian Catholic Directory", he was transferred to the Taree parish (north of Newcastle). About 1986 he was transferred to Sydney, where he became a teacher at Waverley College (Christian Brothers), where he stayed until the early 1990s, when police allege he was instructed not to associate with children or young people anymore. More recently, Fr John Denham had been living in Sydney and working for the Catholic Church as a librarian at a resource centre. Police said that Lake Macquarie Detectives (near Newcastle) had been investigating the allegations after an initial complaint was made in April 2008. The investigating unit for this case is known as Strike Force Georgiana, which can be contacted by telephone on 02 4942 9999. Alternatively, people wishing to offer information anonymously can call Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000. First charges At first, on 14 August 2008, Denham was charged with 30 sex offences, allegedly committed against 18 boys as young as eleven. The charges on August 14 included 28 counts of indecent assault of a male, one count of buggery and one count of attempted indecent assault of a male. Police said that the alleged assaults, in the August 2008 charges, occurred mostly in the Newcastle area. Police said many of the alleged assaults took place at St Pius X High School at Adamstown, in the late 1970s. Further assaults allegedly occurred in the Charlestown parish, Newcastle, in 1980 and the Taree parish (north of Newcastle) in 1981. These places are all within the Catholic diocese of Maitland-Newcastle. Detectives arrested Denham in Kensington, in Sydney's east, after a four-month investigation. He was taken to Sydney's Central Local Court, where his case was brought before Magistrate Alan Moore. Denham opted not to appear in the courtroom and he remained in his cell during the hearing. There was no application for bail and it was formally refused. Magistrate Moore remanded Denham in custody to appear in court in Newcastle on October 1. More charges, October 2008 On 1 October 2008, the Denham case came up again in Newcastle Local Court, where he appeared by video link from a Sydney jail. He was dressed in a green prison tracksuit. This time, police laid a further 37 charges against him. The new charges relate to 14 males, bringing Denham's total of alleged victims to 32 and bringing his total charges to 67. Of the new charges, 16 allegedly occurred in Adamstown, and one at Charlestown, between 1978 and 1980. The earliest offence is alleged to have occurred between 1968 and 1971 at Granville, near Parramatta in western Sydney. This boy was allegedly assaulted between 1968 and 1979, while four others were allegedly abused at Taree in the 1980s and two at Wingham (near Taree) in the late 1970s. More charges, December 2008 In Newcastle Local Court on 17 December 2008, police doubled the criminal charges against Denham to 134. Denham heard the charges via an audio-visual link from Silverwater jail, where he is in custody awaiting his future court appearances. The 67 new charges relate to seven alleged victims. Denham is now accused of sexually abusing 39 boys across almost two decades. Among the fresh charges are allegations of buggery, that he incited one boy to commit an indecent act with another student, and that he mauled boys' penises. Fifty-one of the new charges relate to one victim, and are alleged to have occurred between January and December 1977 at Adamstown (in Newcastle) and Cardiff (in Newcastle's east). A further two victims were also allegedly indecently assaulted at Adamstown in the late 1970s. The remaining four were allegedly abused in the late 1970s or early 1980s around Taree (north of Newcastle). Lake Macquarie detectives are continuing their investigation.
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