AUSTRALIA
The Age
February 9, 2016
Nino Bucci
Crime reporter for The Age
EXCLUSIVE
A Catholic priest stood down amid child sexual abuse allegations has moved to Malaysia, where he is using a gay dating website to seek the company of “young Asian men” while on paid leave.
Father Peter Grasby, who is suspected of abusing boys from at least two Melbourne parishes during almost 40 years as a priest, also propositioned a former parishioner on a gay dating website, it can be revealed.
Father Grasby, the former parish priest of St Mary Magdalen in Jordanville, near Chadstone, was placed on administrative leave from the position when he was accused of abusing a boy aged 10 to 14 in another parish more than three decades earlier.
He was also accused in a Victorian parliamentary inquiry of allowing boys to sleep in his former presbytery at St Michael’s in North Melbourne and of surrounding himself with a concerning number of young Vietnamese boys at St Mary Magdalen.
The case of Father Grasby, who was placed on administrative leave in 2012, raises questions about the Melbourne Response, engineered by the Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne to handle sexual abuse complaints, and the role it plays in allowing suspected serial offenders to go free on paid leave without supervision, a victim’s support group says.
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