By Sean Fewster
Adelaide Now
December 15, 2010
http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/south-australia/anglican-chruch-of-south-australia-swept-child-sex-abuse-under-carpet/story-e6frea83-1225971525957
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| Wilfred Edwin Dennis outside the District Court. |
ANGLICAN priest Wilfred Dennis was fired after being convicted of indecent assault but was welcomed back by the church just 12 months later.
Within five years, the sexual predator molested an altar boy left in his care and went on to abuse two more people in the months that followed.
Yesterday, District Court Judge Paul Rice said the reason Dennis was able to prey on the young was because the church had "swept" his previous crimes "under the carpet".
"So indecent assault is all right, is it?" he asked.
"That's the only conclusion one can come to, that the Anglican Church thought indecent assault was OK but if it was something more serious, it may have a different view.
"Was he simply moved (between) parishes and this matter swept under the carpet?"
Dennis, 75, has been found guilty of three counts of indecent assault and four counts of unlawful sexual intercourse his third child sex conviction.
In 1970, the Supreme Court found him guilty of indecently assaulting two altar boys.
Then-Justice Roma Mitchell jailed Dennis for six months, saying he would lose his position with the church.
However, Dennis resumed work in 1971, abusing one altar boy between 1975 and 1976 and two more between 1977 and 1978.
He is observing a 20-month sentence for the 1975-76 offences but is yet to be sentenced for 1977-78 crimes.
Yesterday, prosecutors said Dennis's licence to be a priest had been "conditionally" reinstated in 1971 so he could "go back through" the church's hierarchy.
Judge Rice said he had no idea how church officials "managed to justify that to themselves".
"I'm just making observations, really no more than querying how on earth Dennis was in a position to commit these offences against these victims," he said.
"It's not as if this was a private confession.
"This was a public trial, he was convicted and sentenced in public with all the stigma that goes with it.
"For the life of me, I can't see how this was swept under the carpet."
Judge Rice will sentence Dennis in February.
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