Paedophile Priest David Edwin Rapson to Be Sentenced for Molesting Young Boys
By Shannon Deery
DAVID Edwin Rapson made a career out of destroying lives. For two decades he used the protection of the priesthood to prey on young, vulnerable boys. Underneath the holy garments and behind the broad smile lay a hidden evil. Rapson was the Devil in disguise. His crimes were so appalling that Pope John Paul II made the extraordinary decision to defrock him in 2004, following a campaign by his former colleagues. The head of his order rallied the pontiff to make the unusual move, telling him Rapson was “an offender of the worst kind”. But for the victims of his unrelenting reign of terror it was too little, too late. The same priests that had moved to have him kicked out of the church had protected him for too long. These colleagues had been committing their own crimes, so turning him in was never an option. Such a move risked exposing a perverted paedophile ring that operated from a rural college on Melbourne’s outer fringe. Rapson had not taken long to become an enthusiastic member of the sexually deviant group at the school. Many knew about his offending but turned a blind eye. He was even caught in the act. “God made us this way and it’s his fault,” the young priest told a colleague who walked in on him molesting a student. Rapson was barely out of high school himself when, while studying as a trainee priest in 1975, he attacked for the first time. “Robert” was the younger brother of a friend. They’d known each other just a little while but he looked up to the young seminarian. Rapson had worked quickly to build the young boy’s trust and before long he was taking Robert to footy games and spending time alone with him. The boy idolised him, and eventually asked Rapson to be his confirmation sponsor. An honour among Catholics, a sponsor is spiritual guide. Shortly after, while they were at a school retreat, Rapson pounced. He invited Robert into his bedroom and started talking about sex. “Then he abused me,” Robert said. “I was only a kid. I had no real idea of what sex was, let alone between males of differing ages. We weren’t as educated in the ’70s as kids the same age are now. “I’d never even heard of this sort of thing, let alone a member of the clergy being involved in such a thing.
“It seemed surreal at first. Then it seemed disgusting. “Then it turned into a nightmare.” Not long after the abuse Robert’s grades slipped, he started drinking and smoking, and had many sexual partners. Before long, he also started taking drugs. It’s a familiar story shared by countless victims of sexual abuse. “I took to (taking drugs) like a duck to water. I could sleep for more than three hours at a time for the first time in years,” Robert said. “When I felt my temper out of sorts, it solved that problem, too. “It was the only thing that could rid me of those daily memories, or at least make them bother me less. “For a few hours at least.” Robert turned to a life of crime and openly admits to being a lousy father and worse husband. “There has not been one single day go by that the things that grotesque pig did to me let me be,” he said. “I’ve never been a regular everyday drinker, but when I did drink I drank all I could find. “Anything at all, as long as it made me feel different. “Not better, just different. Even feeling sick was better than feeling normal.” Robert tried to kill himself twice. He still thinks about it. It’s a legacy Rapson has passed to many students. At last count he had been convicted of indecent assaults and rapes against 10 boys. When allegations of abuse were levelled against him, Rapson would be sent interstate by his superiors. When new allegations surfaced he’d be moved on again. The offending was an open secret almost everywhere he went. He wasn’t subtle about his penchant for young boys.
The wily kids would make sure to never be around him alone, but others walked straight into his predatory hands. “Most students were aware something was not right but we were powerless to do anything,” a former student remembered. Rapson, like so many other abusers, liked vulnerable boys — kids from broken homes, or the shy, quiet types. “He taught me religion in 1983 and I believe he was abusing boys there,” one past student remembered. He didn’t want to be named but remembered Rapson clearly. “Many a story circulated amongst us back then of how he would take boys into his office on a weekend and give them beer. “Only years later did it click what he was doing. What’s also clear is the school did nothing about it.” Others remembered Rapson fondly as a good person. “He was not your stereotypical type of priest. He could relate to us younger students,” another student said. “When you spoke to him it was more like speaking to someone as an equal. “He was very encouraging. I enjoyed being in his company and at times it made me feel a bit special.” One of his victims was in year 8 and his dad had been diagnosed with cancer. For Rapson, that was an opportunity. When he was able to get the boy alone under the ruse of counselling, he gave him alcohol and abused him. Plying children with scotch, giving them cigarettes and letting them play video games in his office — a rarity in the 1980s — was Rapson’s modus operandi. He let some get drunk consciously, but for others he spiked their Milo. As a dormitory master at his all-boys boarding college, Rapson also stalked his victims as they slept. Some woke to him touching them, some woke to worse. As he grew older, his attacks became both verbally abusive and violent. He had a type, and for those children there was no escape. One of his victims was 16 and had been sent to board with priests to study agriculture. He was dyslexic with learning difficulties, and his parents believed the priests could help. He hadn’t been at the school long before Rapson raped him. During the attack the boy started to cry, prompting Rapson to hit him and taunt him that no one would hear him anyway. He continued to attack the boy several times, each incident becoming more aggressive than the last. On one occasion, when Rapson was deputy principal, the boy was bound and gagged in his office. Despite suspicions about his abuse of children, Rapson was never stopped from rising through the ranks of his order. Another former boarder remembered Rapson inviting him to his office after “lights out” to play computer games. He said after about 20 minutes he gave him a lemonade that made him a “little bit dizzy”. What followed was another example of Rapson’s evil. “I must have passed out or fallen asleep. When I woke up I was on the floor,” the man said. He said Rapson raped him before he managed to flee. “He yelled at me in a voice like the devil and said, ‘Come back’,” the man said. “I was too scared and just ran all the way back to my dormitory.” The man said he was later attacked by a colleague of Rapson, who had also given him a lemonade that made him pass out while playing a computer game. “I woke on the floor next to the desk, again in the foetal position,” the man said. After the abuse, he said the brother told him: “Get out of my sight, you disgust me.” Experts have tried to analyse why Rapson was such a prolific abuser. They have come up with few answers but say it stems from his own deprived and loveless upbringing. Born the eldest of three children, Rapson never knew his biological father. He grew up poor in Upwey, and had little food and clothing. When he was 18 months old, his mother married Ron Rapson and took his surname, a court was told. He became Rapson’s only father figure, and he wasn’t a good one. He was a cruel and violent alcoholic gambler who never accepted him and regularly beat him and his two sisters. Rapson said his earliest memory was of being kicked by his stepdad when he was just four. He began running away from home at an early age, and as a little boy would be tied to a clothesline to curb his escapes. He was also sexually abused. Rapson studied at an all-boys school run by priests he eventually worked alongside as a predatory adult. “Your entry as a late-age teenager into a religious order and then assignment at a Catholic boarding school, which I accept harboured priests and brothers engaged in sexual abuse of their students, was a particularly unfortunate placement for you,” County Court judge Liz Gaynor told him in 2013. “You rose within the ranks of that order to eventually become deputy principal of that school. “In that time you displayed entirely predatory behaviour involving misuse and abuse of your power as a religious and as a teacher in varying and callous ways. “It was brazen, it was manipulative and it was heartless.” More than that, Judge Gaynor said he had been “utterly cruel, sadistic and violent”. A lawyer once told a court that Rapson’s offending had to be seen in the context of him being a product of the religious order he joined. His vow of chastity, that he described as unrealistic, also couldn’t be ignored. Rapson argued that as a young gay man he had sexual feelings, seen by the Catholic Church has evil and unnatural. But it was always somebody else’s fault — his stepdad, other priests, the Church. Rapson is yet to apologise to his victims. He has never shown a shred of remorse. Instead, he continues to torture them and maintains his innocence at every possibility, despite his former order paying out more than $80,000 to victims. After being sentenced to a lengthy stint in jail by Judge Gaynor, Rapson appealed and won. It meant a string of new trials and more pain for his victims as he fought the charges. Again, he was found guilty. The 61-year-old is expected to be sentenced tomorrow. He’s in jail and he knows he’ll be there a while yet. He said his physical and mental health had deteriorated since his original trial. He’s suffered a breakdown in prison and expects he’ll be kept behind bars for the next decade. His victims say it is justice, at last. Contact: shannon.deery@news.com.au
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