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Paedophile Priest Known As the "Tickle Monster" Jailed for 18 Years after He Groomed Children and "Treated Them As Objects"

By Josh Hanrahan
Daily Mail
October 6, 2016

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3826299/Victorian-priest-Robert-Claffey-jailed-18-years-child-abuse.html

A priest known as the 'tickle monster' will spend the next 18 years in jail after he was convicted of sexually assaulting dozens of children from the 1960s to early 1990s.

Robert Patrick Claffey, a former priest of the Ballarat diocese in Victoria's west, used his position of power as a religious figure to abuse children over the three decades.

But the 73-year-old's sustained abuse came to an end this week when he was jailed for 18 years and four months - with a minimum of 13 years and four months - one of the harshest penalties handed down to a paedophile.

Robert Patrick Claffey, a former priest of the Ballarat diocese in Victoria's west, has been jailed for 18 years after committing dozens of sexual assaults on young children from the 1960s to 1990s

The 73-year-old was a former parish priest at Portland Catholic Church (pictured)

Judge Felicity Hampel called Claffey's abuse 'shameful' and said the fact he could act with impunity for such a long period spoke volumes of the power he exerted over his victims.

Claffey's nickname was created firstly because he was always 'tickling' and touching children, while the 'monster' was what came next.

In 1969 he attacked a seven-year-old girl as she prepared to make her first Communion.

Then, in 1977, he attacked a boy who was alone in his family home in Apollo Bay, before the youngster managed to fight him off with a cricket bat.

And 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.

Over the following decades he assaulted many more children and altar boys.

Frank Hampster, one of Claffey's victims, said he blames the Catholic Church in both Ballarat and Melbourne for its role in a number of sexual abuse cases.

'(It was) nothing more than a pedophile protection and relocation program,' Mr Hampster said.

'If you were faced with people like Gerry Ridsdale (another paedophile priest) and complained about him, he was replaced by Bob Claffey.

'(His sentence) 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.'

Claffey is just one of a number of priests to have been convicted for sexually assaulting children during their time as priests

Claffey was suspended in the 1980s after the father of one of his 12 victims reported him to the Bishop of Ballarat, Ronald Mulkearns.

But less than a decade later in 1991 he was once again working in the diocese at the parish of Portland.

Claffey cultivated a tactile persona - grooming parents to be accustomed to his horseplay and tickling - and within a year he had offended again, preying on a nine-year-old boy.

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

 

 

 

 

 




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