AUSTRALIA
Bendigo Advertiser
Adam Holmes@AdamHolmes010
6 Feb 2017
THE Sandhurst Diocese had the second highest rate of priests accused of child sexual abuse out of Australia’s 17 Catholic dioceses during a 60 year period.
Figures released from the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sex Abuse showed almost 15 per cent of priests who ministered in the Sandhurst Diocese between 1950 and 2010 were accused of child sexual offences.
The Sandhurst Diocese covers the area from Kerang to Mount Beauty, and includes the regional centres of Bendigo, Shepparton, Wangaratta and Wodonga.
The diocese was second only to the Diocese of Sale for the proportion of priests alleged to have sexually abused children between 1950 and 2010.
Proportionately, more priests allegedly committed offences in Sandhurst than the Ballarat Diocese, where the Royal Commission sat to hear evidence from residents and former students in 2015.
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