AUSTRALIA
Broken Rites
By a Broken Rites researcher (article posted 10 February 2014)
Former students of a Catholic boys’ school in South Australia (Salesian College, Brooklyn Park, Adelaide) have complained that at least three senor priests at this school between the 1960s and the 1980s were child abusers. The abuse happened under the noses of the Melbourne-based national headquarters of this Catholic religious order, the “Salesians of Don Bosco”.
Here are details of the three priests in the Adelaide incidents:
1. The Salesians’ national headquarters have acknowledged that Father Patrick Laws committed child-sex offences in 1967-68 while he was a senior staff member at Salesian College, Brooklyn Park, Adelaide.
2. Another former student of the same school has lodged an official complaint about having been sexually abused in 1969 by another teacher, Father Adrian Wenting, who eventually rose to be the head of this school.
3. And in 1980-81, this school had a paedophile priest, Father Frank Klep, as its head. Eventually, Klep was jailed in Victoria for Victorian crimes.
These three priests also worked at other Salesian schools around Australia. Salesian priests and brothers belong to this Australia-wide order, instead of being confined to a particular local diocese.
The Salesian religious order has stated that it has a “special interest” in boys. As well as owning schools, the Salesians have also operated homes, clubs and camps for disadvantaged (that is, vulnerable) boys.
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