BRISBANE (AUSTRALIA)
Brisbane Times
Oct. 6, 2019
By Lydia Lynch and Warren Barnsley
A Catholic priest found guilty of indecently dealing with a schoolboy while he has a teacher at Brisbane’s Villanova College has been acquitted after the Court of Appeal found the law he broke did not exist at the time.
Michael Ambrose Endicott, 75, was convicted of three counts of indecently dealing with a child in the 1970s and 1980s after a five-day trial in Brisbane District Court in March this year.
At a hearing in April, the Court of Appeal ordered his convictions and 18-month jail sentence be set aside.
In their judgement published on Friday, Court of Appeal president Walter Sofronoff along with Justices Philip Morrison and Elizabeth Wilson explained why.
Mr Endicott’s trial was told he was in charge of pastoral care and religious education at Villanova College during the 1970s.
A jury found Mr Endicott indecently photographed his young victim three times, the first time being on a school hiking trip in 1975 when he asked the nine-year-old to accompany him to a creek area in dense bush.
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