AUSTRALIA
news.com.au
A CATHOLIC priest at the notorious Neerkol orphanage in central Queensland brutally abused boys as young as nine and told his victims they would go to hell if they spoke out, a royal commission has heard.
THREE former residents of the orphanage told the inquiry into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse on Thursday resident priest Father John Anderson regularly molested or raped them during their time there.
David Owen, 76, said the now-deceased Fr Anderson began molesting him after he became an altar boy at age nine.
The abuse quickly escalated to the point where the priest was raping him up to two times a week, continuing over a period of two years.
“I was told by Father Anderson that it was not a sin for a child to have impurity with a priest but it was a mortal sin to tell anyone about it – and that if I did so, I would go to hell,” Mr Owen told the commission.
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