Salesian College Rupertswood: New probe urges students to come forward
A Catholic school rocked by shocking historic child sex abuse crimes is facing fresh claims, with other victims urged to come forward.
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Former Salesian College students are being asked to come forward with information about historic child sex abuse.
Years of abuse at the then boarding school at Rupertswood Mansion from the 1970s to ’90s has led to past priests being imprisoned.
Other staff associated with the college at the time have been ordered to pay substantial compensation.
Porters Lawyers, which is acting for several victims who allege they were sexually abused at the school, is seeking to speak with former students and residents for information on disgraced priests including David Edwin Rapson, Frank Peter De Dood, Frank Gerard Klep, Julian Benedict Fox and Michael Scott Aulsebrook.
In 2016, Rapson was sentenced to a maximum 12 and a half years’ jail over the assault of a number of young boys.
Klep pleaded guilty to assaulting three students at the Sunbury college between 1976 and 1982. He is serving a maximum 10 and a half years’ jail for a string of evil offending.
In 2004, the Australian chapter of the order was engulfed in scandal amid allegations that local superiors knowingly moved priests accused of sexual assault across state borders and even overseas to evade authorities.
Klep spent an extended period in Samoa but the order denied he was moved there to avoid ongoing investigations into sex assaults.
He was deported in 2004 for failing to disclose his criminal convictions for child sex offending.
In 2017, De Dood was jailed for three years, with a non-parole period of 20 months.
He admitted to abusing five boys between 1978 and 1983.
Four of the students were abused at Salesian’s Rupertswood college where De Dood taught from 1981 to 1986.
Fox and Aulsebrook have also been convicted of abusing students at the school.
Porters Lawyers also wants to speak to former teachers or the parents of children at the school between 1970 and 1990.
In 2016, Salesian College gave a public apology to victims and loved ones affected by decades of historical sexual abuse.
The dark history of the school also came to light with the ongoing Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.
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Originally published as Salesian College Rupertswood: New probe urges students to come forward
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