AUSTRALIA
Broken Rites
By a Broken Rites researcher
Article posted on 1 January 2012
The Catholic Church in Australia harboured a priest, Father Victor Gabriel Rubeo, for three decades after he indecently assaulted two boys in one of his earliest parishes (in Melbourne in the 1960s). In 1996 he pleaded guilty in court after these two victims finally spoke to police. On 28 October 2011, Rubeo appeared in court again, charged with 30 additional offences (in the 1960s) against the same two boys. He was ordered to re-appear on 16 December 2011 for a full hearing but he died (aged 78) before this next court date.
Broken Rites will refer to these two boys as “Tom” and “Wayne” (not their real names). They were born in the early 1950s and were related to each other. In the 1960s they lived at Laverton, a Melbourne outer-suburb.
According to a prosecution file which was compiled for the 2011 court proceedings, Rubeo’s offences allegedly began when Tom and Wayne were aged 11 or 12 and became more frequent when the boys were 13 to 15. At the time, neither Tom nor Wayne knew that the other was being abused.
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