AUSTRALIA
Brisbane Times
March 24, 2013
Rashida Yosufzai
AAP
A man allegedly sexually abused by a Catholic priest as a teenager says Tony Abbott should not have vouched for the priest’s character in court.
John Gerard Nestor, 50, was a priest in the Wollongong diocese in NSW when he was charged with the indecent assault of the then-14-year-old altar boy.
In his 1997 court case, the priest admitted he had slept on mattresses on a floor with the boy and his younger brother in July 1991, but denied assaulting the boy.
Opposition Leader Tony Abbott, then a federal parliamentary secretary to the employment minister, told the court Mr Nestor was an upright and virtuous man whom he had known since 1984 while studying at Sydney’s St Patrick’s Seminary to become a priest.
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