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	Catholic Priest on 29 Child Sex Charges Keralanext.com [Australia] March 29, 2005 A Catholic priest facing 29 child sex charges dating back to the 1970s has appeared in Melbourne Magistrates Court for the start of his committal hearing. Frank Gerard Klep, 61, has been charged by Sexual Crimes Squad detectives with 28 counts of indecent assault and one of buggery. The offences involve eight boys and were allegedly committed at Sunbury between 1973 and 1979. Klep, a member of the Salesian order, was a teacher at the order's Rupertswood College in Sunbury, on Melbourne's north-west fringe, during the period and eventually rose to become principal. He left Melbourne in April 1998 to become the senior financial officer at a Salesian theological college in Samoa. A month later, Klep was charged with five counts of indecent assault involving a 15-year-old student at the college that dated back to 1973. He has since been charged with a further 24 offences but was released on conditional bail. In a statement, the head of the Salesian order's Australia-Pacific region, Father Ian Murdoch, said Klep remained a member of the order and was living in supervised salesian accommodation in Melbourne. "As with anyone else while still a member of a religious order, and in keeping with the Catholic Church's Towards Healing protocol, Klep's legal fees are being paid for by the Salesians," Father Murdoch said. Magistrate Rowan McIndoe closed the hearing to all members of the public and the media to protect the identities of witnesses in the case. Prosecutors will present 10 witnesses in the hearing, including the eight alleged victims, the mother of an alleged victim and the police informant, Detective Senior Constable John Raglus of the Sexual Crimes Squad. Defence counsel Andrew McKenna said media coverage of the case in June and July last year was substandard and urged Mr McIndoe to bar journalists from examining court documents including charge sheets relating to the case, following an application from journalists to view them. "These reports were demonstrably false in a number of respects and were demonstrably prejudicial in a number of other respects," Mr McKenna said. Similar reports of the latest proceedings could cause "a considerable delay in the future (legal) process", he said. But Mr McIndoe allowed journalists access to the charge sheet, providing witnesses were not named, saying the public interest was served in the release of details of the charges only. The hearing continues.
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