Former Priest Set to Face Trial on Child Sex Charges

By Elise Snashall-Woodhams
Bendigo Advertiser
May 8, 2012

www.bendigoadvertiser.com.au/news/local/news/general/former-priest-set-to-face-trial-on-child-sex-charges/2549330.aspx

ACCUSED: James Jennings, centre, leaves court yesterday.

A FORMER priest who taught in a Bendigo Catholic boarding school in the 1960s has been committed to stand trial on a series of child sex offences.

James Jennings, 79, faces multiple charges of gross indecency and indecent assault on a male child aged under 16.

The charges relate to three complainants, all students at St Vincent's College in Bendigo in the 1960s.

Magistrate Jennifer Tregent heard from the victims now aged in their 60s, and some of Jennings' teaching colleagues, in a two-day committal hearing that finished in Bendigo Magistrates Court yesterday.

Father Kevin Canty said he came to Bendigo to work at St Vincent's College in 1964, about the same time as Jennings.

Father Canty said he could not recall any complaints made by boys against Jennings.

Another Catholic church colleague, Father Greg Cooney, also gave evidence.

This was followed by evidence from the informant Detective Senior Constable Grant Morris, head of Bendigo's Sexual Offences and Child Abuse Investigation Team.

The court was told Detective Morris had started investigating the case after receiving information from New South Wales Police's Strike Force Belle.

Strike Force Belle was set up to investigate allegations of sexual assaults on students at St Stanislaus College in Bathurst. The school was run by the same order of priests as St Vincent's in Bendigo.

St Vincent's was set up in Bendigo in 1955 and became the Marist Brothers junior campus in 1977 then part of Catholic College Bendigo in 1983.

The court heard Jennings was no longer a practising priest and now lived in Tasmania.

Ms Tregent adjourned the case to the Melbourne County Court for a directions hearing on

June 5.

Jennings' bail was extended to this date.