AUSTRALIA
The Age
November 12, 2013
Mark Russel
A former Catholic priest has been jailed for five years for sexually abusing two altar boys during the 1970s.
County Court judge Felicity Hampel said Russell Vears, who later changed his name to Walker, had been a 27-year-old newly ordained priest in 1976 when appointed assistant priest to a parish in Melbourne’s outer south-east.
Within a year of his arrival at the parish, Walker began sexually abusing two 14-year-old boys.
“Their families were active members of the congregation, and they were both altar boys. As a result you had easy access to them, and were trusted by them and their families,” Judge Hampel said on Tuesday.
The judge said that by the third year of Walker’s tenure at the parish, the parents of one of the boys suspected he was abusing their son.
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