AUSTRALIA
The Telegraph
Lauren Farrow
AAP
February 08, 2013
WHEN a teenager confided to her pastor that she had been having sex with a church youth worker and that she’d also seen the man kissing another girl, she was told the story couldn’t be believed.
That wasn’t the view of a court, which years later jailed the worker, Wayne Paul Mason, for more than seven years for indecently and sexually assaulting four underage girls, including the whistleblowing teen.
As Australia steels itself for a national inquiry into institutional responses to child sex abuse, the case highlighted just how hard it can be to bring perpetrators to justice when those around them remain silent.
This month Mason, a former cop now aged 42, was jailed for more than seven years for almost 30 counts of indecently and sexually assaulting the girls between 1996 and 2005.
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