AUSTRALIA
Broken Rites
A former Catholic priest, Father Peter Lewis Comensoli, now aged 76, will stand trial in the New South Wales District Court accused of molesting two boys in separate incidents while this priest was working in the Wollongong diocese, south of Sydney, in the 1960s.
Peter Lewis Comensoli entered pleas of not guilty in Port Kembla Local Court on 6 May 2015 to three charges (called “indecent assault of a male”), allegedly committed against two teenage boys while Comensoli was a priest in the Wollongong diocese:
1. Police allege that Comensoli assaulted one of the alleged victims multiple times in 1966 during visits to the boy’s family at their home at Ingleburn. It is alleged he would play a wrestling game with the boy and, while on top of him, squeeze his genitals. The man reported the alleged assaults to the church in 1999, but the information was not passed on to police until January 2014.
2. Comensoli is accused of assaulting the other boy in 1968, while working at the Shellharbour parish. It is alleged that the boy became close to Comensoli through the priest’s role as leader of a fellowship group for children who attended the parish. This alleged victim disclosed the alleged incident to a psychologist in 2012, who urged him to go to police.
The incidents with both boys allegedly happened on church premises.
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