Defrocked priest Louis Victor Daniels jailed a third time for more historical child sexual abuse

Prolific paedophile and disgraced ex-priest Louis Victor Daniels will spend at least another four years in jail – and have his name recorded on Tasmania’s sex offenders’ register for life.

Louis Victor Daniels being extradited in a previous child sexual abuse case, from Canberra to Tasmania, in 2004. He was extradited again in the current case in 2022.

Defrocked paedophile priest Louis Victor Daniels will spend at least another four years in jail for the historical abuse of young boys, and have his name recorded on Tasmania’s sex offenders’ register for life.

News the disgraced former Burnie Archdeacon will return to prison for the third time has been welcomed by two of his victims, who finally saw their predator face punishment on Friday, decades after his “heinous crimes”.

Daniels, 75, has already been to jail twice before for sexually abusing 11 young boys between the 1970s and the 1990s, including a victim who later died by suicide.

The prolific paedophile was extradited from Canberra to Hobart last year after another two of his victims, who he abused between 1978 to 1987, pressed criminal charges in 2018.

In March this year, Daniels pleaded guilty in the Supreme Court of Tasmania to two counts of persistent sexual abuse of a young person against the two boys, one who was aged nine to 16, and the other 14 to 23.

On Friday, Justice Stephen Estcourt sentenced him over the fresh charges.

He said between the 1960s to the 1980s, Daniels was a prominent Anglican leader and member of youth group, the Church of England Boys’ Society (CEBS) in Tasmania.

Daniels abused the first boy repeatedly at CEBS’ camps at Coningham and Meander Falls.

The abuse only stopped when the boy and another church leader approached a senior figure in the church.

Daniels also repeatedly sexually abused the other boy, twice forcing him to perform oral sex on him and raping him at his home.

The boy cried after the rape and Daniels told him “it was a secret, and because I’m a priest, no-one will believe you”.

“These are heinous crimes committed by a predator by way of a terrible breach of trust,” Justice Estcourt said.

He said statements by the two victims read in court reflected “lives broken”.

He said one of the survivors said he was now in his 50s and couldn’t “remember a time when my life was free from shock or confusion … or feeling responsible for what happened”.

The man said he’d been diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder and was finally at a point in his life where he no longer believed the abuse was his fault.

Justice Estcourt said Daniels, who had been “highly respected” in the church, was defrocked as a clergyman between 1999 and 2005.

Afterwards, he trained and worked as a librarian, but has been an aged pension recipient for the past 10 years.

Daniels notably gave evidence at the national child sexual abuse royal commission in 2017.

He denied sharing boys or being part of a paedophile ring operating within CEBS dating back to the 1960s.

Justice Estcourt jailed Daniels for six years, with a non-parole period of four years.

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