Jury Finds Nsw Priest Guilty of Child Sex

By Lema Samandar
The 7 News
November 4, 2013

http://au.news.yahoo.com/a/19671924/jury-finds-nsw-priest-guilty-of-child-sex/

A Catholic priest accused of child sex offences spanning almost three decades has been found guilty.

[with video]

A Catholic priest accused of child sex offences spanning almost three decades, has been found guilty.

Father Finian Egan, 78, was found guilty of rape and seven counts of indecent assault by a jury in Sydney's Downing Centre District Court on Monday.

The charges relate to three girls aged between 10 and 17, between 1961 and 1987 while he worked as a priest at Leichhardt and Carlingford in Sydney, and The Entrance on the Central Coast.

His trial, which ran for about three weeks, heard that Egan regularly invited a 10-year-old girl into a small room.

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

She said she 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.

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 jury also heard that Egan had assaulted twin sisters at The Entrance in the 1970s after befriending their mother.

Another victim told the court she was in a church group when she was sexually assaulted in Carlingford in Sydney's northwest in 1987.

Egan, who is still a priest but is not in charge of a parish, remains on conditional bail until his sentencing, which is scheduled for December 16.