AUSTRALIA
Broken Rites
By a Broken Rites researcher (article updated on 4 May 2015)
Catholic priest David Edwin Rapson used computer games, soft drinks, alcohol and cigarettes to lure boys (as young as 12) into his office at a Catholic boarding school before he sexually abused them, a Melbourne court has been told. After two years of hearings which finished in 2015, Rapson (now aged 61) was convicted of serious child-sex crimes. Now he is locked up, awaiting the details of his jail sentence which has been re-scheduled to be announced on Monday 11 May 2015.
Rapson, who was the school’s vice-principal at one stage, also gave some of his victims a drink of drug-laced chocolate-milk or lemonade to make them sleepy before he sexually abused them, the court was told.
However, if boys complained about Rapson’s abuse, they tended to merely tell Rapson’s colleagues and friends in the priesthood, some of whom might be offenders themselves. And the church does not arrest any priests or Brothers — only the police do this.
It was some of the victims, not the church authorities, who finally brought Rapson to justice.
These victims were of various ages, from 12 to 17, and they were not all in the same years at school. These were not Rapson’s only victims. They are merely the ones who, eventually (as adults), took the opportunity individually of having an interview with detectives from Victoria’s Sexual Crimes Squad, without knowing that other victims were initiating similar police action.
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