A former senior Jesuit brother at prestigious Sydney Catholic school St Ignatius’ College Riverview has been jailed for the historical abuse of a student.
Laurence Leonard was found guilty in June of two counts of indecent assault against a 12-year-old pupil in 1974. He was aged 30 at the time.
Laurence Leonard has been jailed over the indecent assault of a 12-year-old pupil at St Ignatius’ College Riverview in 1974.Credit: Phil Carrick
The 80-year-old was last week sentenced to nine months’ prison with a three-month non-parole period, with Judge Ian Bourke condemning the “extremely serious breach of that trust and a grave abuse of his position of authority”.
According to a summary of facts outlined in NSW District Court documents, Leonard called the boy over to him while he was playing on the basketball courts during lunch or recess at the lower north shore school.
He said he would tuck his shirt in for him but then proceeded to assault the boy twice, causing him to feel “shocked and frozen”.
Once the former Jesuit priest stopped touching the victim, the boy walked back to his friends and did not say anything about what had happened. He did not report the offending to police until December 2017.
Bourke said the victim was not only vulnerable but “utterly helpless” because he could not stop the offending nor tell anyone about it.
Saint Ignatius’ College Riverview.Credit: Dion Georgopoulos
He noted the victim’s evidence in which he said his extremely religious parents held priests in high regard.
“So if I was to say anything to them they would have been shocked ... [It] would have been a clash with their faith and you know, and a conflict between wanting to help me and their belief in the church,” the victim had told the court.
“Also I didn’t want to get into trouble if I’d said something and then, you know, the school didn’t believe me, you know, they could have expelled me.”
The man said that if his parents did believe him, they might have taken him out of the well-regarded school, which they wanted him to attend.
“They struggled, you know, to pay the fees but they wanted – it was regarded as the best Catholic private school, so they wanted me to stay there and I was aware of that,” he said.
“And I didn’t want to get Brother Leonard into trouble as well because I, you know, was friendly with him and apart from the abuse I liked him. So all these things were going around in my head.”
Bourke said child sex offences have profound and deleterious effects on victims for many years, if not the whole of their lives.
“The offences involved a terrible, and no doubt confusing and humiliating invasion of the victim’s privacy and physical and emotional safety,” he said.
Leonard began his priesthood studies as a novitiate in August 1962, and worked at Riverview from 1968 to 1984.
He left teaching some years after the offending and lived in Victoria as a priest, including serving as spiritual director at the Corpus Christi seminary in Melbourne.
Bourke said Leonard, who has significant health issues and has been living in an aged care home, has shown no remorse due to maintaining his innocence.
When considering his lack of criminal history, age and health issues, Bourke said his risk of re-offending was low.
Leonard was convicted of two counts of indecent assault on a male person under the now repealed Crimes Act 1900, which has a maximum penalty of five years’ jail.
Those crimes have been replaced by new offences, which would have a maximum penalty of 20 years if committed today.
Leonard will be eligible for parole on November 26.
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