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	Pedophile Priest Can Return to Theological Library Job after Prison By Anthony Klan The Australian December 16, 2009 http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/pedophile-priest-can-return-to-theological-library-job-after-prison/story-e6frg6nf-1225810744932 A PEDOPHILE former priest will be offered his old job back at a theological library once he is released from prison because it has no "kiddie section". Former priest John Sidney Denham confirmed his guilty plea yesterday to 29 offences, including buggery and indecent assault against 39 male victims, while he was a priest and schoolteacher in the Newcastle area of NSW in the 1970 and 80s. The victims were between 7 and 16 years of age and are now in their early to mid-40s. His former colleague, Catholic Father Martin Wilson, yesterday told the NSW District Court Denham was a "pleasant and knowledgeable person". He said it would "be the right thing" for the Chevalier Resource Centre in the eastern Sydney suburb of Kensington to re-employ Denham after his release. "We don't have many children around . . . it doesn't have a kiddie section or anything like that," Father Wilson said. Denham was the deacon of the Mayfield parish in the Maitland-Newcastle Catholic Diocese in 1972 and moved among four schools until 1981. He then took a job at Sydney's Waverley College, before moving to the Chevalier Resource Centre in 1994. The case against Denham is one of several engulfing the Maitland-Newcastle Diocese, which has been forced to publicly apologise for a string of child abuse admissions. "The offences evidence a persistent and extended course of criminal conduct involving multiple victims and significant planning," prosecutors said of Denham. "The offences involve gross abuse of the position the offender held as a priest and . . . as a teacher, and the trust he was accorded because of his position. "All of the offences were committed by the offender in circumstances where he made direct use of his position to gain access to his victims and, having abused the boys, he again relied upon his position to ensure that either no complaint was made, or if it was made that the child would not be believed." Denham yesterday appeared in court for his first round of his sentencing hearing. The charges relate to 39 victims but a further 30 offences will be taken into account once he is sentenced. Father Wilson told the court he "felt sorry" for Denham, which drew gasps from onlookers. "I felt sorry for him, for someone who has had his life destroyed, whether guilty or not," he said. Father Wilson said he had been aware Denham had been accused of child sex abuses in the 80s, but was unaware of the details. The court heard those charges were dropped. Asked whether he was aware Denham had been accused of engaging in oral sex with boys, Father Wilson said: "I didn't know that. I would never, from his work in the library and my interaction with him, suspect that's what he had done".
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