AUSTRALIA
Broken Rites
A former Catholic priest, James Patrick Jennings, 80, is standing trial in the Victorian County Court in February 2014, accused of committing sexual offences against boys at a Catholic boarding school in Bendigo, Victoria, in the 1960s.
Prosecutors allege that Father Jennings indecently assaulted three boarders, aged 12 and 13, at the school while in charge of one of the dormitories there. Jennings has pleaded not guilty to six counts of indecent assault.
Jennings’ defence lawyer told the jury that his client absolutely denies the allegations.
The school was St Vincent’s College, which then situated at Bendigo, 150 kilometres north of Melbourne. Father Jennings was then a member of the Vincentian religious order (this order is also called the Congregation of the Mission). He later left the Vincentian order and stopped working as a priest.
[St Vincent’s College was set up in Bendigo in 1955 and was run then by the Vincentian order. In 1977, it was taken over by the Marist Brothers. In 1983 this school then became part of Catholic College Bendigo.]
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