AUSTRALIA
Broken Rites
By a Broken Rites Australia researcher (article posted 26 June 2014)
A priest of the Melbourne Catholic archdiocese, Father James Henry Scannell, aged 88, is currently undergoing a jury trial on charges that he sexually assaulted a 12-year-old altar boy more than 40 years ago. The alleged victim (now in his fifties) finally contacted the police after learning that his aunt’s funeral in 2010 was to be conducted by this priest, the court was told.
In the early 1970s, according to court documents, Father Scannell was stationed at St Anne’s parish in East Kew, Melbourne, where the 12-year-old served as an altar boy and attended with his aunt.
Father Scannell (date of birth 17 April 1926) is accused of sexually assaulting the boy at the priest’s parish house between August 1970 and July 1972 when the boy was aged between 11 and 13. Father Scannell has pleaded not guilty to one charge of buggery.
Father Scannell is alleged to have led the boy into his bedroom and then sexually assaulted him one day when the boy was at the priest’s house working for pocket money.
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