Victim of Paedophile Priest David Rapson Tells of Torment

By Adam Cooper
The Age
October 9, 2013

http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/victim-of-paedophile-priest-david-rapson-tells-of-torment-20131009-2v7ok.html

A victim of paedophile priest David Rapson has told a court how he had been "hell-bent on destruction" in trying to get away from the torment of abuse he suffered 23 years ago.

The man, who was a teenager when he was raped by Rapson on four separate occasions at Salesian College in 1990, said he had lived a life of drug addiction, self-harm, crime and the breakdown of family relationships in the years since.

"There hasn't been one day in 23 years since that I haven't thought about what my abuse and what David Rapson did to me," he said in a victim impact statement read to the County Court on Wednesday.

"My life would have been so, so different if not for the abuse."

Rapson, 60, was in August found guilty of five charges of rape and eight counts of indecent assault in sexually assaulting eight boys at Salesian College between the mid 1970s and 1990. His victims are now men aged in their late 30s to 50s.

Rapson had been in teaching positions at Salesian College's Rupertswood and Lysterfield campuses, where the offences took place.

At a pre-sentence hearing on Wednesday, the victim who had his statement read said he had needed surgery on his testicles after being raped, and the scars were a constant reminder of his suffering.

He said after being "hellbent on destruction" in the years after he ran away from the boarding school, he was trying to mend relationships with his wife and three daughters and his parents and sisters. But he was plagued by anger, depression and a constant inclination to run away.

In a separate statement, the man's mother said she and her husband had never been told by Salesian College their son required surgery, nor that he once swam across a fast-flowing river in a bid to get away from the school.

Prosecutor David Cordy said all the victims had been affected through their lives by Rapson's abuse, after the priest had targeted his victims and breached their trust.

Rapson's trial heard he lured boys into his office with the offer of playing computer games, drinking alcohol and smoking cigarettes before they were abused.

"This is very, very serious offending, particularly in the setting in which it occurred and the power and authority that the accused had, particularly with a view that he thought he was untouchable, he could do what he wanted," Mr Cordy said.

Defence counsel Shaun Ginsbourg said Rapson himself had been physically abused as a boy by his stepfather and sexually abused as a boy by two men who lived near his home.

Mr Ginsbourg said the vow of chastity Rapson took on joining the Salesian order was "unrealistic for a sexually functioning person", and that the abuse happening at Salesian College when he first taught there had a "disinhibiting effect" on him.

Judge Liz Gaynor challenged defence claims most of Rapson's offending happened when he was a young man. She said there was an escalation in the seriousness of his crimes and that he had treated his victims in an "unbelievably cruel" manner.

Rapson was jailed for two years in 1992 for sexually abusing a boy at Salesian College in 1987, and was defrocked by the Catholic Church in 2004.

Mr Cordy called for Rapson to be jailed for between 12 and 14 years.

Rapson was remanded in custody and will be sentenced on October 17.

Meanwhile, another former Salesian College teacher appeared in Melbourne Magistrates Court on Wednesday on charges of sexually abusing boys. He is scheduled to reappear in court next year.