(AUSTRALIA)
news.com.au
March 11, 2019
By Warren Barnsley
A former Catholic priest who took nude photos of a schoolboy while he has a teacher at Brisbane’s Villanova College has been jailed.
Michael Ambrose Endicott, 75, was found guilty last week of three counts of indecently dealing with the child about 40 years ago.
He was handed an 18-month jail sentence on Monday, to be suspended after he serves six months.
Endicott was in charge of religious education at the school during the 1970s, his Brisbane District Court trial heard.
The victim said he was first abused by Endicott on a school hiking trip in 1975. Endicott asked the nine-year-old boy to accompany him to a secluded area in dense bush, where he photographed the student naked.
Endicott told him: “There’s nothing to worry about. It’s okay. You’re doing a good job.”
Three years later, Endicott abused him in the school tower. Again, the boy was photographed naked.
Years later, when the boy was a teenager, Endicott took him into a change room and told him to strip when photos were taken of him in the shower.
“He went along with the defendant’s behaviour … because he was a priest,” crown prosecutor Russell Clutterbuck said.
“He said, ‘at school, priests ruled. They have absolute power over everything’ and he dared not speak out against them.”
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