Former Kyneton Catholic parish priest Peter Waters has been sentenced to 36 months’ jail and must serve 14 after being found guilty of child-sex offences against five victims during his time in Melbourne parishes in the 1970s and ’80s.
In 1999, when aged in his 50s, some allegations about Waters became public and the Melbourne archdiocese withdrew him from the Kyneton parish (his final posting).
The investigation of Waters was conducted by detectives from the Sano Taskforce of the Victoria Police sexual crimes squad.
In 2017, police charged him with child-sex offences against six victims.
At a committal hearing in the Melbourne Magistrates Court in 2018, Waters pleaded not guilty to all charges. The case then proceeded to a higher court, the Melbourne County Court, where the charges would be handled by a judge and jury.
At the County Court in 2019, Waters re-confirmed his not-guilty plea. The court divided the charges into three separate trials to be held one after the other with separate juries.
In the first trial Waters faced five charges involving a teenage girl. He was found not guilty.
In the second trial he faced seven charges involving three teenage boys and was found guilty. The court heard that Waters had gained the trust of the victims and their parents before grooming the boys and molesting them.
Judge Scott Johns QC said the details of each case showed Waters’ offending to be “a monumental breach of trust”.
“You had access to these boys’ lives that your role as a priest and the relative innocence of the times allowed,” Johns said.
“The confusion and sense of betrayal for each of them when you breached their trust has been devastating for them.”
After his guilty verdict in the second trial, Waters entered a plea of guilty relating to the third trial with two complainants.
A court-imposed media-suppression order to allow jurors to focus on the evidence was lifted after Waters’ guilty plea.
He was sentenced last Wednesday.
– With assistance from Broken Rites.
