AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald

BY JOANNE MCCARTHY

12 Jul, 2012

DEFROCKED Catholic priest John Sidney Denham violently sexually assaulted a 12-year-old schoolboy over a number of months in 1977, police have alleged.

But another priest’s violent response at news of the alleged assaults stopped the boy speaking about it until decades later.

Police who have charged Mr Denham, 70, with 47 child sex offences involving 14 boys, allege a priest, who cannot be named, repeatedly hit the boy and yelled: “How dare you make up these lies? How dare you come into my office and make up lies about a man of his stature?”

The boy, who came from a violent home and had seen his Catholic school as an “outlet from this family abuse”, “believed from that time that he could not tell anyone”, police allege.