AUSTRALIA
Australian Broadcasting Corporation
December 19, 2018
By Edith Bevin
A priest who worked at the Marist College in northern Tasmania in the 1960s has been sentenced to four years in prison after pleading guilty to historical sex crimes.
He will serve a minimum non-parole period of two years.
Thomas Fulcher pleaded guilty in the Burnie Supreme Court earlier this month to three counts of indecent assault.
The court heard there were two complainants, both students at the school during the time Fulcher was the Marist College priest between 1960 and 1967.
Fulcher’s victims, now aged in their 60s, came forward and reported the abuse during the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.
Fulcher, now aged 84, admitted he had made one boy perform a sex act in front of him and had also touched him on the genitals.
The priest then put on his confessional robes and took the boy’s confession about what had just happened.
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