AUSTRALIA
The Age
June 4, 2014
Paul Osborne, AAP Senior Political Writer
The royal commission into child abuse will examine the case of a former Catholic priest who once received a court reference from Tony Abbott.
John Gerard Nestor, 50, was a priest in the Wollongong diocese in NSW when he was charged with the indecent assault of a teenage altar boy.
In his 1997 court case, the priest admitted he had slept on mattresses on a floor with the boy and his younger brother in July 1991, but denied assaulting the boy.
The prime minister, then a federal parliamentary secretary to the employment minister, told the court Nestor was an upright and virtuous man whom he had known since 1984 while studying at Sydney’s St Patrick’s Seminary to become a priest.
“He was … a beacon of humanity at the seminary,” Mr Abbott said.
The magistrate found Nestor guilty and sentenced him to jail.
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