Former Bunbury Priest Jailed over Cartoons Featuring Child Sex Abuse
By Joanna Menagh
A paedophile former Bunbury priest has been sentenced to 12 months in jail for possessing comic strips featuring children being sexually abused. Adrian Van Klooster, 75, was charged after police from the Sex Offender Management Squad (SOMS) searched the room where he was staying in Maddington, in Perth's southern suburbs, in November last year. The District Court was told the officers found a CD featuring two comic strips Van Klooster had downloaded from the internet showing children being mistreated, abused and subjected to incest. In 2003, Van Klooster was sentenced to eight years in prison for sexually abusing two boys and three girls while he was a Catholic priest in the Bunbury Diocese. As a result, he was put on the national Sex Offenders Register, and his room was searched by SOMS officers after it was discovered he failed to let them know he set up a Twitter account. Van Klooster claimed he had accessed the material not for sexual gratification, but because he wanted to try to get some insight into incest that happened in his own family. However, Judge Bruce Goetze said he found that submission difficult to understand and accept. Judge Goetze described the images as "fairly sophisticated", saying they were in colour and the characters were made to look like real children. "It shows an ongoing interest in children, although they may be in cartoons … they do nonetheless normalise sexual behaviour in real children," he told the court. Judge Goetze took into account Van Klooster's age, his cooperation with police and the fact he entered an early plea of guilty to the charge of possessing the material. But he said the offence was so serious, only an immediate 12-month jail term was appropriate. Van Klooster will need to serve half the term before he can be released on parole.
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