AUSTRALIA
Broken Rites
By a Broken Rites researcher (updated 3 December 2013)
Broken Rites research has revealed how the prominent Catholic order of Salesian Fathers harboured an Australian paedophile priest, Father Frank Klep, for four decades – allowing him to commit sexual crimes against defenceless boys. But, with help from Broken Rites, some of his victims finally managed to get Klep exposed during three court cases. Klep’s most recent court appearance was on 2 December 2013.
Frank Gerard Klep was ordained as a priest in Melbourne in 1972. He was convicted in Melbourne in 1994 for indecently assaulting vulnerable boys, aged 13, in the sick dormitory of a Salesian secondary school, Salesian College (also known as “Rupertswood”), at Sunbury in Melbourne’s north-west. The offences occurred in the 1970s but were covered up until the 1994 court case.
During the 1980s and ’90s, parents and ex-students from “Rupertswood” tried to get Klep removed from the priesthood but the Salesians obstinately protected him. The Salesians eventually transferred him from Australia to the Pacific island Samoa — and they illegally concealed his criminal conviction from the Samoan authorities. In Samoa, he was out of reach of the Australian police. In 2004, after more victims contacted the Australian police, Samoa deported Frank Klep back to Australia, where he eventually pleaded guilty regarding the additional victims. He was again convicted. Even as Klep entered jail in December 2005 (eleven years after his first conviction), his Salesian bosses still had not removed him from the priesthood.
In court again on 2 December 2013 (after more of his victims contacted Broken Rites and the police), Klep pleaded guilty to more crimes against boys, including buggery.
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