AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald
JOANNE MCCARTHY
May 22, 2016, 10 p.m.
CATHOLIC priest David O’Hearn was the master manipulator who charmed and groomed people to get his way and told child victims to “look up at Jesus” pictures as he sexually abused them in church buildings.
He was the priest who stood in the dock during trials, waved to supporters and implored them to “keep the faith” in him as an innocent man and victim of injustice, despite juries finding him guilty of child sex crimes.
After four years of trials, appeals, re-trials and hearings where his name could not be reported in the media, O’Hearn on Friday could finally be revealed for what he is – a serial child sex offender who is sexually attracted to young boys and preyed on the most vulnerable.
“He was a predator. I faced him in court because we no longer have to carry the shame of what was done to us. That shame has now shifted. He should be the one who’s ashamed,” said a victim of O’Hearn’s who was 12 in the mid 1980s when he was sexually abused.
O’Hearn was convicted of 44 crimes against six boys. He gained sexual gratification from wrestling with boys. He was found guilty of multiple indecent assault charges in church buildings, parks, cars and on camps and forcing oral sex.
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