AUSTRALIA
Sky News
A Melbourne priest made a 10-year-old girl sit on his knee and asked her if she loved him while indecently assaulting her during confession, a royal commission will hear.
Father Peter Searson pulled the girl on to his lap and she could feel his erection, counsel assisting the child abuse royal commission Gail Furness SC said.
The girl made a statement to police in 1990 about the 1985 incident at the Holy Family Primary School in Doveton, saying she tried to sit on the very end of Searson’s knee but he pulled her closer to him.
‘All of this time he kept saying to me ‘do you love me’ and ‘tell me you love me’ as well as asking me to give him a kiss on the cheek,’ the girl said in the police statement, tendered to the royal commission.
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