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Australia priest jailed for child sex attacks
BBC ^ | July 2nd 2010 | Staff

Posted on 07/02/2010 1:46:10 AM PDT by Cardhu

A Catholic priest in Australia has been sentenced to nearly 20 years in jail for sex attacks on 25 children over nearly two decades.

John Sidney Denham, 67, pleaded guilty to a range of charges relating to attacks on boys at schools in New South Wales between 1968 and 1986.

The judge said his actions "contributed to a culture of fear and depravity".

Denham apologised to the victims and their families, saying he saw himself as a "mere scumbag paedophile".

He was sentenced to 19 years and 10 months in jail for crimes including sexual acts and indecent assaults against boys aged between five and 16 years old. He was ordered to serve a minimum of 13 years and 10 months.

Pope apology

Judge Helen Syme spent nearly three hours summing up the charges against the priest, The Australian newspaper reports.

"The incident assaults involved multiple children, often significant planning, were frequently sadistic and overall persistent, objectively serious, criminal courses of conduct," she said.

(Excerpt) Read more at news.bbc.co.uk ...


TOPICS: Extended News; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: australia; catolic; paedophile
Judge Helen Syme spent nearly three hours summing up the charges against the priest, The Australian newspaper reports.

Three hours?

1 posted on 07/02/2010 1:46:16 AM PDT by Cardhu
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To: Cardhu

Most other headlines include the word “sadistic” child abuse.


2 posted on 07/02/2010 1:54:41 AM PDT by Cardhu
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To: Cardhu

He took the wrong career path. He could have been an outstanding and celebrated Democratic senator, in the tradition of Kennedy, Dodd, or Gore.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/victims-were-little-bastards-pedophile-priest-john-sidney-denham-tells-court/story-e6frg6nf-1225886653557


3 posted on 07/02/2010 2:01:47 AM PDT by Psalm 144 (Green shoots? Those aren't green shoots! Those are mold spots!)
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To: Psalm 144

Those in charge already seem to know he was a sadistic bastard that is why they chose well in making him the discipline master of St Pius X High School at Adamstown.

“It’s disgusting, the hierarchy in the Catholic Church.”

Victim’s mother


4 posted on 07/02/2010 2:22:02 AM PDT by Cardhu
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To: Cardhu
I don't know of an title outside of Priest that is so associated with this. I can only believe, that the passivity, acceptance of it by the Church is because it is the norm.

Any decent guy with the funny hat would of cleaned house. None have. Jesus threw out the money changers but not the Church with the abusers of little children.

Pathetic.

5 posted on 07/02/2010 3:24:21 AM PDT by Leisler ("Over time they create a legal system that plunders and a moral code that glorifies it." F. Bastiat)
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To: Cardhu
I think Catholic clergy have raped children on every continent with the exception of Antarctica.

"It's disgusting, the hierarchy in the Catholic Church."

Yes it is...
6 posted on 07/02/2010 3:48:21 AM PDT by TSgt (We will always be prepared, so we may always be free. - Ronald Reagan)
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To: TSgt

The Catholic Church is the church founded by Jesus. The first Pope was Peter and he was given the keys to Heaven. Yes there are sinners in the church, but that does not deny the fact that the Catholic Church does not err in the teaching or faith and morals.


7 posted on 07/02/2010 5:00:30 AM PDT by impimp1
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To: impimp1; TSgt; Leisler
"It's disgusting, the hierarchy in the Catholic Church."

"Throughout the 1970s Joseph Ratzinger taught theology at the University of Regensburg. His older brother Georg took over the Regensburger Domspatzen in 1964 and, over the next 30 years, helped turn the male-only choir into one of the best in the world.

But he says that he never heard of any abuse in his time with the choir. Asked by the Italian newspaper La Repubblica whether he would talk to German officials, the 86-year-old Mgr Ratzinger replied: "Obviously I'd be ready to do so, but I am not able to provide any information on any deed that could be punished, because I don't have any – I never knew anything about it."

Any abuse at the Regensburger Domspatzen, he said, occurred before he took over. He did admit that pupils at the school were subjected to a climate of "discipline and rigour" but added that this was necessary in order to reach "a high musical, artistic level".

But Franz Wittenbrink, a German composer who lived at the school until 1967, described the school as being run by "a sophisticated system of sadistic punishments in connection with sexual lust". He was also quoted by Der Spiegel as saying that it was "inexplicable" that the Pope's brother knew nothing of what was happening."

8 posted on 07/02/2010 5:56:36 AM PDT by Cardhu
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To: Cardhu

He’s just a gay priest.


9 posted on 07/02/2010 6:39:18 AM PDT by usslsm51
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To: Cardhu

This happens so beyond the outside rates, for so long, at such a threat to the idea of the institution, that you have to wonder if like many institutions, the enemies are running it.

In short, the Church is for, by, and is pedophiles.


10 posted on 07/02/2010 9:56:17 AM PDT by Leisler ("Over time they create a legal system that plunders and a moral code that glorifies it." F. Bastiat)
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To: Leisler

Based on the evidence one could be forgiven for thinking that is the case


11 posted on 07/02/2010 10:12:24 AM PDT by Cardhu
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