Court supports victim's flashback testimony

VICTORIA'S Court of Appeal has upheld a conviction against one of Australia's most notorious pedophile priests.

VICTORIA'S Court of Appeal has upheld a conviction against one of Australia's most notorious pedophile priests, finding that despite the case being prosecuted on "flashback" recollections of events 40 years ago, it was reasonable for the jury to find him guilty.

Father Robert Best, the principal of the Ballarat school where fellow Christian Brothers sex offenders Gerald Ridsdale, Edward Dowlan and Stephen Farrell preyed on boys in the 1970s, appealed against his conviction on the grounds that his accuser's allegations had changed over time, lacked corroboration and were made many years after the abuse.

Victoria's Court of Appeal president Chris Maxwell and fellow judges Pamela Tate and Robert Osborn unanimously rejected Best's appeal, noting the jury in the case had been carefully instructed by the trial judge to weigh all these things in its deliberations.

"I am not persuaded that having regard to the evidence as a whole the jury's verdicts were unsafe and unsatisfactory," Justice Osborn wrote in his reasons published yesterday.

Although the complainant initially nominated the wrong year in which the abuse began and wrong location of the school sick bay where three incidents took place and offered poor recollections about other aspects of primary school life, "he did not, however, contradict or depart from the central account he gave", the judge wrote.

Best was last year sentenced to 14 years and nine months in jail for sexually assaulting 11 boys over a 20-year period at schools in Ballarat, Geelong and the Melbourne suburb of Box Hill.

His failed appeal was against seven counts of indecent assault against one of his Ballarat victims between 1971 and 1974. His victim was aged between eight and 11 throughout the abuse. In the trial, the victim gave evidence that he did not recall his abuse by Best until several years later after he had left the school, when he began experiencing flashbacks. The flashbacks continued until he was 18. "These occurred in the context of experiences associated with increased awareness of his own sexuality," Justice Osborn found. "I find nothing improbable in this."

The victim was aged 47, and had retired from the police force, at the time he gave evidence in Best's trial.

Justice Osborn wrote: "It is the experience of the law that there are many cases of sexual assault upon children which do not result in complaint being made until many years later."