Documentary record Bound by Fear
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Conviction Christian institutions & contexts Catholic Sunbury, Victoria, Australia · 2014

Australia: Salesian priest Frank Klep sentenced to a decade for a 'campaign of abuse' at Rupertswood

Record class

Core record

Evidence status

Convicted

Authority role

Salesian priest, teacher and infirmary supervisor at a boarding college

Organization

Salesian College Rupertswood

Spiritual nexus

Boarding students in his pastoral and infirmary care — the sick bay being the most defenceless setting a school contains.

  • Pastoral or clerical authority
  • Institutional obedience or isolation

Evidence structure

Proceedings

  1. 2014-01-01 · convictions in 2005 and 2014

    County Court of Victoria, Australia. Fr Frank Klep, a Salesian priest at Rupertswood, pleaded guilty in December 2005 to thirteen counts of indecent assault against ten boys — many during infirmary care — and in 2014 was convicted of fifteen further child sex offences from the 1970s–80s and sentenced to ten and a half years, the judge describing a 'campaign of abuse'. In the intervening years the order had posted him to Samoa as allegations mounted.

Documented coercion mechanisms

  • pastoral and sick-bay authority over boarding students

Primary record

Sources

national newspaper court reporting verdict and sentencing report 'Evil ex-priest gets more Vic jail time', Canberra Times (2014).

Australian mainstream reporting of the 2014 conviction and sentence.

Related record

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