Ex-Priest in Court on Child Sex Charges
By Mark Russell
A FORMER Catholic priest has appeared in court accused of sexually abusing boys at the Salesian College Rupertswood in Sunbury. David Edwin Rapson, 59, appeared in the Melbourne Magistrates Court on Tuesday charged with one count of rape, five counts of indecent assault, four counts of indecently assaulting a child under 16, and one count of gross indecency. The offences are alleged to have occurred from 1973 to 1990. Rapson had been a teacher and vice-principal at Rupertswood. Prosecutor Anne Hassan told the court the charges against Rapson involved seven complainants who had been aged in their early to mid-teens at the time of the alleged abuse. Ms Hassan said identity was not an issue as the complainants ''clearly identify him as the perpetrator''. She told magistrate Greg McNamara she didn't oppose Rapson's defence lawyer, Brad Newton, asking witnesses if they had been abused by other priests at Rupertswood. Mr Newton said he had subpoenaed Victoria Police for copies of the files on three other former priests at Rupertswood - Father Julian Fox, Father Frank Klep and Father Michael Aulsebrook. He criticised police for failing to respond to the subpoena relating to Father Fox. The defence needed the files before cross-examining witnesses in the Rapson case in relation to ''other goings-on'' at Rupertswood, he said. Mr Newton said two of the witnesses to be called had referred separately to Fox and Klep in their statements. He said since Prime Minister Julia Gillard had announced a royal commission on child sexual abuse, it would be difficult for Rapson to get a fair trial in Australia, let alone Victoria. Fox is the former college principal accused of abusing students during the 1970s and '80s. He has been banned from contact with children by the Salesians and now works for the order's head office in Rome, 10 kilometres from the Vatican. Kelp is a former college principal who was moved by the Salesians to Samoa in 1998 just before he was to face court on five charges of indecent assault, having served nine months (doing community work) in 1994. He returned to Australia in 2004 and was jailed in 2006 for five years and 10 months. Father Aulsebrook was boarding master at Rupertswood in the early 1990s and later stood down as principal at the Salesians' St Mark's College in South Australia. He was sentenced in 2011 to two years' jail with 15 months suspended after pleading guilty to assaulting a 12-year-old victim five times. The first witness to be called on Monday in the Rapson case told the court he had been a student at Rupertswood in 1976. He remembered one day when one of the brothers told the boys not to get dressed because they were going to have a medical examination. ''We were made to stand in a line and look straight ahead,'' the witness, who cannot be named, said in his statement. ''We were all standing in a line with white singlets and our underpants. We were told not to laugh and if we did it would prove that we liked males.'' The witness said the boys were told to pull down their underwear before Rapson walked up to him and grabbed hold of his penis and lifted it up. ''He then fondled my testicles and had a feel for about a minute. I had to look straight ahead and I wasn't allowed to move. Rapson then moved on to the next boy,'' the witness said. The committal hearing continues.
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