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	Celibacy Vow Ruled 'Cruel and Archaic' By Josh Jerga Herald Sun February 24, 2010 http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/breaking-news/celibacy-vow-ruled-cruel-and-archaic/story-e6frf7jx-1225833973120 AUSTRALIA -- THE vow of celibacy imposed on Catholic clergy is "cruel" and "archaic", a judge has said in jailing a priest for grooming a 13-year-old girl for sex over the internet. During online chat sessions between July and August last year, Sydney priest Robert MacGregor Fuller used a webcam to show himself masturbating to a police officer posing as a 13-year-old girl. The 55-year-old pleaded guilty in October to grooming and procuring a child under the age of 16 and today he was sentenced to a maximum of 18 months behind bars. However, Fuller was given a six month non-parole period and six months off his sentence for an early guilty plea. Fuller told the NSW District Court at Parramatta that performing sex acts on the webcam was a way to escape the pressure he was under. "I did it for my own personal sexual needs," Fuller told the court. "It was an expression of the pressure I was under." In handing down the sentence, Judge Allan Hughes said the Catholic Church's vow of celibacy for priests may have led Fuller to become sexually frustrated. "I'm not a Catholic," he said. "I do not regard (that) celibacy (should be) imposed on people. That is because it is a suppression of human instinct. "The priest has to be so strong to suppress normal human instincts - it must be agonising to do this. "I don't know why they don't change their rules. It is archaic. It's cruel, cruel." Fuller used the computer at Liverpool's All Saints Church, where he had served for six years, to have 13 online conversations with the officer who posed as the teenage girl named "Katie". In five conversations, his face was captured as he masturbated on a webcam. He said he did so because "Katie" asked him to. "That is what she wanted to see and I showed her," he said. "The idea is she wanted to watch it because it was pleasurable for her but not necessarily for me." He told the court the chat rooms were part of a fantasy world and he did not truly believe the person watching was a young girl. "There's not necessarily any truth in what they say. It's a fantasy in a sense," Fuller said. "It's a game. It's a fantasy." The priest engaged in explicit conversations with "Katie" asking her "how much hair she had between the top of her legs" and to rub herself. Fuller told her at times "adults would not like us meeting because I'm too old for you" and they would have to do it in a "sneaky way". The court was told Fuller pursued a meeting with the girl at a Parramatta carpark and intended to engage in sexual acts with her in the back seat of his car. "If it was a reality, I'd be there to say: 'hello, how are you'," Fuller said. "Then hopefully mutual touching and fondling." Fuller was arrested on August 13 in the car park of Parramatta's pool where he planned to meet the teenage girl for sex. He was immediately suspended by the Archdiocese of Sydney.
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