Priest pleads guilty re offences in western Sydney parishes

Broken Rites
January 20, 2015

http://brokenrites.org.au/drupal/node/242

A former Catholic priest of the Sydney archdiocese, Father Robert Flaherty, now aged 71, has pleaded guilty regarding sexual offences against two children dating back to the 1970s.

In 2013, Flaherty was charged regarding three boys. Court documents stated that the alleged victims, who were boys aged between 11 and 15, lived in parishes in which Father Flaherty worked in western Sydney. The offences were alleged to have occurred between 1971 and 1982 in western Sydney or during visits to a holiday house in the Shoalhaven area, south of Sydney.

The three alleged victims, now in their 50s, were each members of Father Flaherty’s former parishes at Blacktown, St Marys and Richmond (all to the west of Sydney).

In 2014, Flaherty appeared in Parramatta District Court (with Judge Colesax). He pleaded guilty regarding two of the boys (one incident per boy) and he will be sentenced regarding these two on a later date.

He has entered a plea of not guilty regarding a third boy (with more than one alleged incident) and this will require a trial, with preliminary proceedings scheduled for the Parramatta District Court in late 2015.

Detectives from Blacktown Local Area Command established Strike Force Nemesis to investigate these allegations. The police investigation (by Senior Detective Mick Mahoney, of Blacktown Detectives Office) is continuing.