AUSTRIA
GlobalPost
AFP
A former Austrian priest and headmaster of a monastery boarding school went on trial Monday accused of sexually abusing 15 boys and physically assaulting nine others.
Prosecutors accuse Alfons Mandorfer, 79, now defrocked, of committing “sexual acts of differing intensity” on the pupils between 1973 and 1993 both at the Kremsmuenster school and on foreign trips.
The boys he allegedly abused were often vulnerable and had personal problems, prosecutors charge. He is also accused of whipping them, kicking them and threatening them with a pump-action shotgun.
Kremsmuenster Abbey, founded in 777 near Krems in central Austria, has already paid out more than 700,000 euros ($900,000) in compensation to victims of abuse at the school since the scandal erupted several years ago.
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