Child sex charges against former Maitland-Newcastle diocese Vicar General Barry Tunks have been withdrawn and discontinued.
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Chief Judge of the District Court Justice Derek Price accepted a Crown application to discontinue proceedings against Father Tunks, 77, more than 18 months after he was charged with offences against a boy at Taree in the late 1970s.
The Crown also withdrew and discontinued charges against former psychiatric nurse and convicted child sex offender David John O’Grady, 63, who was charged with offences against the boy at Taree during the same period.
The third man charged with four indecent assault offences against the boy at Taree locations including Catholic Church facilities, notorious Hunter priest John Sidney Denham, 77, was convicted in a judge-alone trial at Port Macquarie in October.
Earlier:
Denham will be sentenced in February. He is already serving a minimum 19 years and five months’ jail sentence for crimes against 58 victims and will not be eligible for parole until 2028.
O’Grady was convicted in 2006 of indecently assaulting the boy in the late 1970s at another location during a camping trip when he was seven years old.
O’Grady was first convicted in 1988 of seven offences against a child, and was convicted again in 2001 of indecently assaulting a young boy.
Father Tunks, Denham and O’Grady were charged after a man had a private hearing with the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.
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