AUSTRALIA
The Canberra Times

EDITORIAL

The sexual Abuse booklet distributed through Catholic schools by the Archdiocese of Sydney. Photo: David Porter

A man was jailed for a minimum of 33 years on Friday for the callous murder of an innocent couple in their home. He suffocated the husband and wife at the behest of the couple’s adopted son for the fee of $17,000, which would enable him to buy a motorcycle.

This was evil in the extreme, beyond comprehension. But in an attempt to make at least some sense of such heinous, dispassionate taking of life, Supreme Court judge Peter Hidden revealed that the murderer, from a supportive family with an ”unremarkable upbringing”, had at the age of 11 been sexually attacked by a Catholic priest. It was the second time the child had been sexually abused by a person in a position of trust and his ”loving, easy…