Catholic priest John Sidney Denham treated schools like ‘paedophilic smorgasbord’

AUSTRALIA
Daily Telegraph

LEIGH VAN DEN BROEKE NEWS LIMITED JANUARY 23, 2015

A Catholic priest who treated schools as a “paedophilic smorgasbord” will spend at least another 13 years in jail after being sentenced for systematically abusing dozens of vulnerable boys.

John Sidney Denham, 73, had already been jailed for at least 14 years in 2010 for his “sadistic” sexual assault of boys as young as five.

But yesterday in the District Court in Sydney, Judge Helen Syme sentenced him to at least another 13 years for the abuse of another 18 boys — describing his crimes as some of the worst the courts have ever seen.

“As the crown rhetorically asks, ‘How much worse does it get?’,” she said.

Denham’s victims intermittently left in tears as the court heard how, through the protection of church colleagues, he was able to have 18 years of uninterrupted offending across schools in NSW.

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