Thursday, August 20, 2009

Priest's Card Game Turned to sex, Court Told

Original article
20/08/2009 8:50:00 AM

CATHOLIC priest Peter Julian Brock used a ruse of playing cards to lure a boy into naked sex trysts which lasted several years, a court heard yesterday.

The alleged victim told a committal hearing yesterday of how Brock had introduced the card game "strip jack" where players lose pieces of clothing depending on what they are dealt in a "counselling room" of a Hunter presbytery before sexually abusing him.

The man, who was a young teenager at the time of the alleged abuse in the 1970s, also told the court how his mother had slapped him and told him "you don't make comments like that about priests" after he had confided in her that Brock was abusing him.

Brock, 63, faces 22 child sex charges involving two alleged victims during the 1970s.

Brock has not been required to enter a plea.

In the first day of a committal hearing expected to last until tomorrow, the man told Newcastle Local Court yesterday of the ongoing abuse he had allegedly suffered at the hands of Brock after the well-known priest had befriended his family.

The court was told Brock had drunk alcohol and socialised with the man's father and often visited the family home.

He had introduced the alleged victim to "strip jack" and regularly played it at the family home, where the pair only got down to their shorts.

But it was when Brock began asking the boy to a presbytery, sometimes by ringing the family and telling the boy's mother that he wanted to play cards after having a "bad day", that the abuse allegedly began, the court heard.

The man told the court that once naked, he and Brock would sit opposite each other and Brock would push the boy's knees apart "so he could look at me" before abusing him.

"He would be drinking and having a smile on his face and drank more and more," the man said.

"He would keep encouraging me to keep my knees apart."

The alleged victim said he began putting more clothes on before visiting Brock in the hope that he would still be dressed when the priest was naked and "that once he had his clothes off I wouldn't have to go any further".

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