Child Abuse Case Priest Claims Victim Paid

9 News
February 20, 2013

http://news.ninemsn.com.au/national/2013/02/20/17/02/child-abuse-case-priest-claims-victim-paid

A Catholic priest laicised by the Vatican after a child abuse case says he suspects the church paid the alleged victim in return for evidence against him.

John Gerard Nestor was a priest in the Wollongong Diocese in NSW when he was charged with the indecent assault of a 15-year-old altar boy in 1991.

He was convicted and sentenced to 16 months in jail in Wollongong Local Court on February 18, 1997.

But in October of that year, he won an appeal against the conviction, serving no time behind bars.

Tony Abbott, then-parliamentary secretary in the Howard government, provided a character reference for Mr Nestor in the lower court, describing him as a "beacon of humanity".

Mr Nestor now alleges the complainant in the case received compensation by the church.

"I suspect - and I have reason to say it, I don't know it (for sure) - that he was promised money in return for giving evidence against me, by the church or officials of the church," he told AAP.

"Because they didn't particularly like me."

A spokesperson for the office of Bishop Peter Ingham, the Bishop of Wollongong, said the Diocese categorically denied the claims.

Mr Nestor also said he does not want the case referred to the royal commission into child sex abuse, which is set to examine institutional handling of abuse allegations.

"Mistakes have been made in my regard and I want the church to concentrate and focus on what it needs to be doing - bringing the gospel to the people," he said.

Following the successful appeal, Mr Nestor applied to the Catholic Church to be re-instated into priestly ministry, but the church never allowed him to return.

The then-Wollongong Bishop, Philip Wilson, now Catholic Archbishop of Adelaide, advised Mr Nestor in writing that, "significant additional material that I have received ... has been a cause of worry concerning your suitability for a further pastoral appointment in this diocese, or any other".

Mr Nestor appealed to the Vatican's Congregation for the Clergy, which decreed he be reinstated in 2001.

But in 2009, following lengthy appeals by the Wollongong diocese, the Vatican officially struck Mr Nestor off the clergy list on "grave reasons".

Mr Nestor told AAP at his home in rural NSW that while he accepted the decision, the Church had embarked on a decade-long campaign to remove him because it was "embarrassed" by the Vatican's initial ruling in his favour in 2001.

"When I appealed to the Vatican, they saw it as a threat," he said.

"They went to a great deal of trouble to find out what they could get against me.

"The guy who was running my case - a very conservative man who was a Catholic and who would do his utmost to protect the church - said to me (then), 'you would be forgiven for thinking these people were trying to get you into jail'."

He said the "additional material" uncovered by Archbishop Wilson which led to his laicisation, was questionable and not as "strong" as the allegations aired in court.

"They were all stuff that even if they were proved, you would say, 'so what does that mean, what does it prove?"

"Some of them were extremely minor. One was that I'd put my hand on the shoulder of a boy after a game of cricket."