AUSTRALIA
Broken Rites
Australia’s national Royal Commission into child abuse will examine the case of a former Catholic priest, John Gerard Nestor, who was convicted by a magistrate in 1997 for the alleged indecent assault of an altar boy. In a higher court, Nestor successfully appealed against this conviction. But the church authorities possessed certain “additional information” about Nestor (not regarding this boy), which they did not provide to the police. Perhaps the Royal Commission might be able to uncover this “additional information”.
During his twenties, John Nestor worked in secular jobs as an administrator. In his early thirties, he
became a student in a Catholic seminary, aspiring to become a priest. He was ordained as a priest in 1989 (in his late thirties) and was accepted into the Wollongong Diocese, south of Sydney.
A relative of his was Bishop William Murray, head of the Wollongong Diocese.
When police charged Nestor in the 1997 court case, Father Nestor (then aged 45) admitted he had slept on mattresses on a floor with a boy (aged about 14) and his younger brother in July 1991, but denied assaulting the boy.
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