By a Broken Rites researcher, article posted on 10 May 2017
Three elderly men (a priest and two teachers), who formerly worked at a Catholic Aboriginal mission in Western Australia, have been ordered to appear in court during 2017, charged with sexually abusing young girls at the mission during the 1960s. The charges were laid in May 2017 by W.A. Child-Abuse Squad detectives after Australia's national Child-Abuse Royal Commission had private interviews with several women who had lived at the mission as children.
The mission, which operated from 1944 to 1979, was located in the Shire of Wandering, 120km south-east of Perth.
The "Wandering Mission" (as it was often called) was a school for boys and girls, conducted the by the Catholic order of Pallottine Fathers and Brothers, with help from an order of nuns. The mission had boarding facilities for needy children.
Police allege that the priest (now aged 78 and now living in Melbourne) sexually abused four girls aged between eight and 15 between 1965 and 1969. He has been charged with rape, six counts of indecent dealing of a girl under 13, and sex counts of unlawful or indecent assault of a female. Police allege that the four girls were aged between eight and 15 years at the time of the first offence.
The three men are scheduled to have a preliminary procedure in Perth Magistrates Court in mid-2017. The priest will appear by video-link from a court in Melbourne.