Paedophile Catholic Priest Peter Grasby Dies

By Nino Bucci
The Age
May 26, 2016

http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/paedophile-catholic-priest-peter-grasby-dies-20160526-gp4jpv.html

Father Peter Grasby asked to move overseas in August 2013 but the Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne said no.

A paedophile priest who fled to Malaysia on paid leave to seek the company of "younger Asian men" has died.

Father Peter Grasby left Australia in January, despite a travel ban issued by the Catholic archdiocese of Melbourne as a condition of his administrative leave.

The church was not aware Father Grasby had left the country until contacted by Fairfax Media, which reported in February about his case and the concerns it raised about the monitoring of sex offenders within the clergy.

Father Grasby was placed on administrative leave in 2012.

An independent commissioner for the archdiocese ordered Father Grasby to return to Melbourne and moved to cancel his entitlements because he had defied the conditions of his leave.

The 66-year-old died suddenly earlier this month. A spokesman for the archdiocese would not say if Father Grasby had returned to Melbourne before his death.

The spokesman would also not confirm whether any complaints regarding the priest remained outstanding. The archdiocese previously said Father Grasby's conduct since he was placed on administrative leave would be reviewed.

A victim of Father Grasby urged the Catholic Church to confirm how many victims had reported abuse at the hands of the priest, who had been suspected of predatory behaviour at parishes across Melbourne over almost 40 years.

Investigators with the church's Melbourne Response upheld a complaint in 2013 that he abused a 10-year-old boy while he was assistant priest at St Joseph's West Brunswick in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Father Grasby was placed on administrative leave in 2012, while he was parish priest of St Mary Magdalen in Chadstone.

Father Grasby was accused during a Victorian parliamentary inquiry of inappropriate behaviour at St Michael's in North Melbourne, a church where he worked before moving to St Mary Magdalen.

"I knew there was no possible way I could be the only one," the victim said.

"He was evil, and he was treated like a protected species. What he thought he could get away with was unbelievable.

"I certainly won't be shedding a tear that he's gone."

Priests on administrative leave are given housing, or a housing allowance, and the same wages and insurance benefits they had been paid prior to a complaint being made.

Father Grasby's disregard for the conditions of his leave, and the failure of the archdiocese to properly supervise him, was revealed when he started using gay dating websites.

One of the men he propositioned on the website Planetromeo was a former parishioner from St Mary Magdalen who was alarmed at the freedom afforded to the paedophile priest.

Father Grasby posted on his profile that he would move to Kuching, Malaysia, in January, and that he happened "to like younger Asian men".