Unanderra priest’s support for Nestor queried

AUSTRALIA
Illawarra Mercury

By KATE McILWAIN June 26, 2014

Unanderra priest Father Mark O’Keefe was questioned about his support for an accused child molester – in defiance of his bishop’s orders – at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse on Thursday.

Wollongong priest John Gerard Nestor was convicted of aggravated sexual assault towards a teenage boy in 1996 but was later acquitted.

After other complaints about Mr Nestor’s behaviour at summer altar boy camps and a long campaign by the Wollongong Catholic Diocese, he was defrocked by decree of the Pope in 2008.

In 1998, however, Fr O’Keefe allowed Mr Nestor to conduct Mass at his Unanderra church despite instructions from then Wollongong Bishop Philip Wilson that he not do so, the commission heard.

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