AUSTRALIA
ABC News

By Bruce MacKenzie

A jury in Lismore has retired to consider its verdict in the trial of a Catholic priest accused of child sexual abuse offences.

John Patrick Casey had been a police chaplain for two decades before he was arrested in July last year and charged with 27 counts relating to 18 allegations of child sexual abuse.

The 68-year-old is accused of molesting three boys on four separate occasions when each was staying with him at the Mallanganee Presbytery, west of Casino in northern New South Wales, in the mid 1980s.

He has pleaded not guilty to all charges in the Lismore District Court.