Nuns Punished Nsw Child Sex Victim: Court

The 9 News
October 14, 2013

http://news.ninemsn.com.au/national/2013/10/14/15/52/nuns-called-sydney-child-sex-victim-liar

Sydney Catholic priest Finian Egan regularly invited a 10-year-old girl into a small room.

When she told nuns what he was doing to her, she was called a filthy little liar and was forced to drink caster oil as punishment.

This is the evidence a Sydney court heard from an alleged victim of the priest, who is on trial for sexually assaulting three young girls.

The woman lived in a Catholic boarding house at Leichhardt, in Sydney's inner west, for almost two years.

She said she well remembers one occasion in March 1961.

Egan invited her to his sacristy, a room where a priest prepares for a service and where church furnishings are kept.

She said he made her sit on his lap and pulled off her underwear and sexually assaulted her.

"I think it was weekly for a while," she said, crying in the witness box.

"As a 10-year-old, it felt like it was every day."

After Egan told her she had beautiful hair, she had her aunty cut it off in a bid to keep him away from her.

She said when she told the nuns they called her a "filthy little liar" and punished her by making her swallow caster oil.

The 78-year-old Egan is facing eight counts of indecent assault and one count of rape relating to three girls aged between 10 and 17, between 1961 and 1987.

Crown prosecutor Trevor Bailey told the jury in his opening statement that Egan also assaulted twin sisters at The Entrance in the 1970s after befriending their mother.

Mr Bailey said Egan took one of the sisters to a house owned by the church and raped her.

"She protested," Mr Bailey said.

"He ignored her protests.

"She was 17 years old."

On another occasion, Mr Bailey said, Egan was in the twins' family home and their mother's partner walked into a room where he had one of the girls on his lap.

The partner had said "that's not very priestly behaviour" to which Egan replied, "you watch what you say", Mr Bailey told the jury.

Charges relating to one of the sisters were not laid because of a legal technicality but she may still give evidence to the trial, Mr Bailey said.

Another alleged victim was in a church group when she was assaulted in Carlingford in Sydney's northwest in 1987.

Egan wore a hearing aid in court and covered his face with his hands several times as the accusations were aired.

The trial is set down for three weeks and continues on Tuesday.