AUSTRALIA
Broken Rites
By a Broken Rites researcher (article updated 23 June 2014)
Australia’s national child-abuse Royal Commission is investigating how the Catholic Church authorities dealt with a priest, John Gerard Nestor, who was convicted by a magistrate in 1997 for the alleged indecent assault of an altar boy. In a higher court, Nestor successfully appealed against this conviction. But the church authorities possessed certain “additional information” about Nestor (not regarding this boy). Perhaps the Royal Commission might be able to uncover this information.
During his twenties, John Nestor worked in secular jobs as an administrator. In his early thirties, he became a student in a Catholic seminary, aspiring to become a priest. He was ordained as a priest in 1989 (in his late thirties) and was accepted into the Wollongong Diocese, south of Sydney.
A relative of his was Bishop William Murray, head of the Wollongong Diocese.
When police charged Nestor in the 1997 court case, Father Nestor (then aged 45) admitted that he had slept on mattresses on a floor with a boy (aged about 14) and his younger brother in July 1991, but denied assaulting the boy.
Mr Tony Abbott, who was a member of the Federal Parliament in the Howard Government, gave “good character” evidence for Nestor before the sentencing. Mr Abbott told the court that Nestor was an upright and virtuous man whom he had known since 1984 while studying at Sydney’s St Patrick’s Seminary to become a priest. Mr Abbott said: “He [John Nestor] was … a beacon of humanity at the seminary.”
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