AUSTRALIA
The West Australian
Elle Farcic
February 13, 2016
A Jehovah’s Witness elder who sexually assaulted two vulnerable teenagers he met through the church was sentenced to three years jail yesterday over the “destructive” abuse.
David Frank Pople, 68, met the boys through the Safety Bay congregation of the church and assaulted them between 1989 and 1996.
One of the teens reported the sexual assaults to elders in 1997 but police were not made aware of the abuse until he filed a police report in 2014.
Pople was forcibly ejected from the church for being “insufficiently repentant” in 1997 and readmitted the following year at his request.
District Court judge Troy Sweeney accepted Pople was genuinely remorseful but said he had interfered with his victims’ natural maturing process in a “very destructive way”.
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