Same priest: “Guilty” in Victoria but “not guilty” in New South Wales

AUSTRALIA
Broken Rites

By a Broken Rites researcher (updated 30 April 2014)

A Catholic priest (James Patrick Jennings) allegedly committed indecent assaults against boys at two Catholic boarding schools – one school in New South Wales and another school 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, different jury. 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.

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