AUSTRALIA
Broken Rites
By a Broken Rites researcher (updated 25 February 2014)
A Catholic priest (James Patrick Jennings) allegedly committed indecent assaults against boys at two Catholic boarding schools – one in New South Wales and one in Victoria. A Victorian jury in 2014 found him guilty of the Victorian charges but a NSW jury in 2010 had found him “not guilty” of the NSW charges. Same priest, different State. This Broken Rites article is about the NSW trial.
In the Sydney District Court in 2010, a jury heard evidence from four men (now aged in their sixties) alleging that they were indecently touched by Father James Jennings when they were pupils at a boarding school fifty years earlier — in 1960-61. The school was St Stanislaus College, Bathurst, in central-west New South Wales. This school was conducted by Catholic priests and brothers in the Vincentian order (also called the Congregation of the Mission).
The jury returned a verdict of Not Guilty.
Charged in 2009
James Patrick Jennings, who left the Catholic priesthood in the late-1970s, appeared before a magistrate in Sydney’s Downing Centre Local Court on 26 May 2009, for preliminary proceedings, charged with indecent assault on boys at St Stanislaus College during 1960-1961.
When charged, Jennings was aged 76 and was living in the Wattle Grove district, south of Hobart, Tasmania.
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