AUSTRALIA
Broken Rites
By a Broken Rites researcher (article updated 18 November 2014)
Broken Rites has helped to obtain justice for victims of a paedophile Catholic priest, Father John Sidney Denham.
* In Sydney on 2 July 2010, this priest was sentenced to a long jail term after getting away with his crimes for four decades.
* In 2013, Denham pleaded guilty to further crimes (on more victims), and he will receive even more time in jail for these crimes. He is due to be sentenced, for these additional crimes, in Sydney’s Downing Centre district court in late November 2014 (case numbers 201100382572 and 201200211543).
This Broken Rites article gives the background to Denham’s life of crime.
Denham committed his crimes under the noses of his superiors and colleagues, while these people looked the other way.
The church recruited Denham as a trainee priest in the late 1960s and, according to statements made in court, some of his child-sex crimes were committed during his period of training.
Denham’s superiors were told in the 1970s about what he was doing to children but the complaints were ignored. He was allowed to continue as a priest and was merely transferred to new districts, thereby putting more children at risk. Twenty years later, in the 1990s, a victim prompted the police to charge Denham but, with the help of church resources, Denham managed to beat the charges.
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