AUSTRALIA
The Age
October 9, 2013
Adam Cooper
Reporter for The Age
A victim of paedophile priest David Rapson has told a court how he had been “hell-bent on destruction” in trying to get away from the torment of abuse he suffered 23 years ago.
The man, who was a teenager when he was raped by Rapson on four separate occasions at Salesian College in 1990, said he had lived a life of drug addiction, self-harm, crime and the breakdown of family relationships in the years since.
“There hasn’t been one day in 23 years since that I haven’t thought about what my abuse and what David Rapson did to me,” he said in a victim impact statement read to the County Court on Wednesday.
“My life would have been so, so different if not for the abuse.”
Rapson, 60, was in August found guilty of five charges of rape and eight counts of indecent assault in sexually assaulting eight boys at Salesian College between the mid 1970s and 1990. His victims are now men aged in their late 30s to 50s.
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