AUSTRALIA
The Freethinker
By
Barry Duke
– June 8, 2012
A CATHOLIC priest, charged in 2005 with 28 counts of indecent assault and one of buggery, had earlier been appointed “spiritual advisor” to a fellow priest charged with multiple child sex offences.
According to this report, in 1994 the then Vicar-General of the Melbourne archdiocese, Gerald Cudmore, oversaw the appointment of Father Frank Klep as spiritual director to Father Victor Rubeo after child sex abuse allegations about Rubeo were first reported to the archdiocese.
At that time, Klep had been charged by police with child sex offences. He was convicted of indecent assault in December 1994. Despite his conviction, Klep continued to act as Rubeo’s spiritual adviser during 1995.
Since the 1980s, Klep had been the subject of repeated child sex abuse complaints from parents of students attending the Salesian order’s school at Rupertswood in Melbourne’s outer north-west. He was sentenced to perform community service for his 1994 conviction and sent to Samoa by the Salesian order in 1998, when it became clear he was to be charged with more child sex offences.
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