AUSTRALIA
Stuff
LOUISE HALL
A notorious paedophile priest in Australia has pleaded guilty to historical child sex offences on the eve of his trial.
On Wednesday, Vincent Gerard Ryan, 78, pleaded guilty to attempted homosexual intercourse with a male aged between 10 and 18, indecent assault on a male and gross indecency with a male under 18.
Ryan had been due to face a two-week trial in the Downing Centre District Court. The offences occurred in the mid-1980s in the Hunter region of New South Wales. The victim was aged between 13 and 15.
The Catholic priest, commonly known as Vince Ryan, has previously spent 14 years in jail for preying on 35 boys aged six to 14 between 1972 and 1991. He was released from Long Bay jail in 2010.
In a statement, Bishop Bill Wright of the Catholic Diocese of Maitland-Newcastle, welcomed Ryan’s guilty pleas.
“While a small consolation, I am grateful that Ryan’s victim and others were spared the ordeal of a trial. Ryan’s past crimes continue to throw a dark shadow onto the Diocese’s present and I am terribly saddened that there is yet another child whose innocence was robbed by the sins of this man,” he said.
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