AUSTRALIA
Broken Rites
By a Broken Rites researcher
The Catholic Church harboured Father David Edwin Rapson for two decades, thus endangering boys in Catholic schools in Victoria, Tasmania and New South Wales.
Rapson was born on 30 July 1953. He was recruited in the early 1970s as a trainee Catholic priest in Melbourne in a Catholic religious order, called the Salesians of Don Bosco. This is an Australia-wide order and subsequently Rapson ministered in Victoria, New South Wales and Tasmania.
The Salesian religious order was founded by “Saint” John Bosco in 1859 in Italy. Operating world-wide, the Salesians expanded to Australia in 1923. The order began developing several Australian schools for boys – notably in Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania. It also developed Boys Town (a home for troubled youths) in Engadine, south of Sydney.
In Melbourne (where they have their Australian headquarters), the Salesians operated three schools:
* Salesian College “Rupertswood”, at Sunbury in Melbourne’s outer north-west;
* Salesian College, Chadstone, in Mebourne’s south-east; and
* St Joseph’s College, Ferntree Gully, in Melbourne’s east.
In addition to these schools, the Salesians also had a residential training centre near Melbourne for their recruits into the priesthood. This centre (originally known as “Auxilium College”) is in a rural setting at Lysterfield (30 kilometres south-east of Melbourne). Nowadays, with the decline in the number of priests, the Lysterfield property is known as the Salesian Retreat Centre, used for Catholic schools for “spiritual retreats”. The centre has overnight accommodation for several dozen visitors. There have been complaints about students being sexually abused while visiting this Lysterfield property.
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