AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald
After nine trials spanning 12 years St Joseph’s teacher Brother John Maguire faces sentencing for child sex offences
After nine separate trials spanning 12 years, Brother John Dennis Maguire was used to being in a courtroom.
But when the 71-year-old priest sat in the dock on Friday it was the first time he had faced the prospect of being sentenced for a crime.
From 1978 to the mid-1980s, Maguire was a teacher and dorm master at St Joseph’s College in Hunters Hill, an exclusive Catholic school run by the Marist Brothers.
In 2002, he was charged with multiple sexual offences in relation to several students at the school, with the complainants alleging that he would target boys who were homesick – comforting them and then sexually assaulting them.
Maguire pleaded not guilty to the charges and his lawyers successfully applied for each of the allegations to be heard separately.
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