NEW SOUTH WALES (AUSTRALIA)
The Daily Telegraph
October 31, 2017
By Annabel Hennessy
A paedophile priest who betrayed the trust of families he had befriended to rape and abuse girls as young as 10 over three decades is about to walk free after spending just four years in prison.
Father Finian Egan, 81, will be released from jail on December 19, despite desperate pleas from his victims to keep him locked up.
“This sends a message not just to me, but to every child sex survivor,” victim Kellie Roche said.
It was Ms Roche’s courageous decision in 2010 to report Egan’s attacks on her while he was a parish priest at Carlingford in the 1980s that led to other victims coming forward. She even asked for the sentencing judge to lift the suppression order on her name so that she could talk about his crimes.
Ms Roche, who now works with the charity Fighters Against Child Abuse Australia, said setting Egan free was an insult to all child sex survivors.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.