Salesian child abuse in Australia
In 2005, the Australian public learned that, for a decade, the prominent Catholic order of Salesian Fathers had been harbouring a priest who had a criminal conviction for child sex-abuse. Broken Rites has conducted detailed research on this case.
The priest, Father Frank Klep, had been convicted in Melbourne in 1994 for indecently assaulting vulnerable boys, aged 13, in the sick dormitory of a Salesian secondary school, Salesian College (also known as "Rupertswood"), at Sunbury in Melbourne's north-west. The offences occurred in the 1970s but were covered up.
During the 1980s and '90s, parents and ex-students from "Rupertswood" tried to get Klep removed from the priesthood but the Salesians obstinately protected him. The Salesians eventually transferred him from Australia to the Pacific island Samoa -- and they illegally concealed his criminal conviction from the Samoan authorities. In Samoa, he was out of reach of the Australian police. In 2004, after more victims contacted the Australian police, Samoa deported Frank Klep back to Australia, where he eventually pleaded guilty regarding the additional victims. He was again convicted. Even as Klep entered jail in December 2005 (eleven years after his first conviction), his Salesian bosses still had not removed him from the priesthood.
This story raises questions not just about Frank Klep but about the Catholic system that sheltered him from justice.
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