New Abuse Claims against Father F

By Mitchell Nadin
The Australian
July 25, 2012

www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/new-abuse-claims-against-father-f/story-e6frg6nf-1226434263437

THE priest known as Father F, the subject of a police investigation into child sex offences dating to the 1970s, is facing fresh allegations of abuse.

Mark Boughton, who was a student at the Catholic primary school in Moree in northern NSW during the late 1970s, last night told the ABC Father F - as he is known for legal reasons - forced him to perform oral sex numerous times when he was an 11-year-old altar boy.

Last week, NSW police established Strike Force Glenroe to investigate the alleged child abuse by Father F of several altar boys in parishes across the state.

Mr Boughton said Father F had abused him after gaining the trust of the boy's parents. "I thought he was trying to do the right thing and draw the community closer to everyone," he told the ABC's 7.30 last night.

Mr Boughton said the priest would invite him to his living quarters, where he was forced to engage in sexual acts. "After dinner he'd say, 'Would you like to ... stay at the presbytery?' "

One night he awoke to find Father F in bed with him.

"I could feel he was naked. He made me lay there and he put his penis between my legs and put his leg over my leg so I couldn't move.

"I even went away on a trip to an altar boy's camp, and I know he made me perform oral sex on him. I don't know why I thought it would stop, it just didn't."

Father F, expelled by the Catholic Church in 2005, now lives in Armidale in northern NSW, near some of his alleged victims and families.

Mr Boughton said that in the mid-1980s he was approached by the family of Damian Jurd, a schoolmate who had been allegedly molested by Father F, but he denied he had been abused because he was "too ashamed".

Jurd committed suicide in 2001.

Mr Boughton said he finally decided to go to police yesterday because he wanted to ensure such abuse never happened to any other child.