Priest Charged with Child Sex Offences

Sky News
August 30, 2012

http://www.skynews.com.au/local/article.aspx?id=789652

An elderly Catholic priest has been charged with committing and covering up child sex offences near Newcastle in the 1970s and 80s.

The 74-year-old man went to Charlestown Police Station where he was arrested on Thursday morning.

He has been charged with 14 offences committed at a high school at Adamstown where he was principal in the 1970s and at a church at Waratah in the 1980s.

The school-related crimes include one count of buggery, relating to his alleged failure to report sexual abuse by another priest of a child at the school in 1978.

They also include charges of indecent assault and common assault, also for allegedly failing to report sexual abuse of a boy by another priest in the same period.

He has also been charged with committing 10 sexual assault offences at a Waratah church in 1984 and 1985.

Among the charges were five counts of sexual assault involving a boy aged between eight and nine.

The priest has been granted bail with strict conditions and is due to appear in Newcastle Local Court on September 25.

The charges laid were consistent with the laws at the time of the alleged offences, police said.