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Vic "Tickle Monster" Jailed for Sex Abuse

By Genevieve Gannon
7 News
October 6, 2016

https://au.news.yahoo.com/vic/a/32822980/vic-tickle-monster-jailed-for-sex-abuse/#page1

The children of Ballarat called him the tickle monster.

Tickle, because he was always tickling and touching them, and monster because of what followed.

Robert Patrick Claffey, 73, a priest and predator, abused children under the cloak of religious care for three decades.

He was suspended in the 1980s after the father of one of his 12 victims reported him to the Bishop of Ballarat, Ronald Mulkearns, but in 1991 was appointed to the parish of Portland.

He had offended again within a year, preying on a nine-year-old boy.

This week, the tickle monster was jailed for more than 18 years.

It's one of the heaviest penalties to be handed down in the state for what the judge called a shameful and protracted abuse by a person in a position of authority.

Shameful it may be, but rare, it is not.

Claffey joins the ranks of many incarcerated clergy and religious brothers likely to die behind bars after decades of depravity caught up with them in their later years.

Frank Klep, a priest and school principal, was 70 when he was jailed for 10 and a half years for abusing 28 schoolboys in the 1970s and 1980s.

David Edwin Rapson will be 73 when his sentence expires if he serves the full 12 and a half years he was given.

Robert Charles Best was 70 when he was jailed for 15 years for 27 vile crimes against 11 boys.

John Joseph Farrell, a NSW priest, was jailed for 29 years for 79 offences against 12 children.

And Australia's worst pedophile, Gerald Francis Ridsdale, will be in prison until he is 87 for a lifetime of abuse that went unchecked despite the first complaint being recorded against him the year he was ordained.

Ridsdale has been convicted of crimes against 53 children but is now believed to have abused at least 1000 children across the western districts of Victoria.

His record is an indictment on the Catholic Church's handling of these men, one of Claffey's victims said after Claffey was jailed on Tuesday.

He described the dioceses of Ballarat and Melbourne as "nothing more than a pedophile protection and relocation program".

"If you were faced with people like Gerry Ridsdale and complained about him, he was replaced by Bob Claffey," victim Frank Hampster told reporters.

Indeed, one of Claffey's 12 victims had also been abused by Ridsdale, from whom he took over at the Star of the Sea parish in Apollo Bay in 1977.

The boy was alone in the family home when his parish priest came calling.

Claffey fondled the boy, who ran away, and when Claffey gave chase the 12-year-old fought him off with a cricket bat.

He abused another boy, aged eight, before he was transferred to Our Lady Help of Christians in Wendouree, where he abused seven children.

Mr Hampster said the sentence for "unbroken and unbridled pedophile rape" was fair and just.

"It may be tantamount to a death penalty, which is something I don't believe in, but Bob Claffey has taken a fair portion of everyone's lives and he deserves to have a fair portion of his life taken from him."

Judge Felicity Hampel said the fact Claffey was able to act with impunity for such a period speaks volumes for the power he exerted over his victims.

Claffey cultivated a tactile persona - grooming parents to be accustomed to his horseplay.

He would visit family homes, play with the children, hugging and tickling them, before going into their bedrooms to say goodnight.

In 1974 he dropped into the home of an altar boy at his Warnambool parish of St Joseph's to say goodnight.

He went into the boy's bedroom and began to tickle him.

The play turned rough as he straddled the boy, fondled him under his pyjamas and assaulted the 13-year-old.

He abused this boy for two years, until an occasion when the victim managed to push him off and said he would kill Claffey if he ever came near him again.

Claffey moved to another parish.

After saying Mass at his church in Wendouree he invited a 10-year-old girl who was playing hide-and-seek to conceal herself under his vestments.

She slipped underneath after he lifted his robe and then pushed her face against his groin.

Claffey abused the child for the next five years.

He visited her when she had her appendix removed and asked if she had been having impure thoughts that could have caused her to become sick, before putting his hand under her bedcovers.

In one gross incident, he molested a 12-year-old boy while pretending to comfort him over the death of his big brother - then officiated at the funeral the following day.

Judge Hampel said Claffey was a pedophilic sexual predator who treated children as objects to whom he could do whatever he wanted.

Victims advocate Andrew Collins said there were other victims who were not represented in the 19 charges because they had committed suicide.

"The Catholic Church should hang its head in shame because it facilitated the rapes that this man performed and that can't be forgotten," Mr Collins said.

Another survivor said she suspects Claffey had more victims still living in Victoria.

"If you want to come forward please do," she said.

Readers seeking support and information about suicide prevention can contact Lifeline on 13 11 14.

Suicide Call Back Service 1300 659 467.

MensLine Australia 1300 78 99 78.

Multicultural Mental Health Australia www.mmha.org.au.

Local Aboriginal Medical Service available from www.vibe.com.au.

 

 

 

 

 




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