UNITED KINGDOM
Telegraph
10 AUGUST 2016
A judge has made a personal apology to a victim of a former children’s home worker and Catholic priest who sexually abused 12 children dating back to the 1970s, and slipped through the justice system before admitting his crimes.
Philip Temple, 67, sexually assaulted a number of boys and a girl in his care between 1971 and 1977 when he worked for Lambeth and Wandsworth borough councils.
He then changed career to become a priest in 1988 and served at Christ the King Monastery, Vita Et Pax in Cockfosters, where he abused two children including an altar boy.
Temple was tried in the late 1990s but the jury could not decide on a verdict, sparking a retrial which ended in an acquittal, Woolwich Crown Court heard on Wednesday.
The former priest was described by one of his victims as an “extremely skilled liar and manipulator with sociopathic qualities”, and the court heard the effect on his victims’ lives had proved “incalculable”.
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