KEY POINTS:
Another former priest at Christchurch's Marylands special school was today jailed for the sexual abuse of boys which has left them scarred and angry - and one into a life of crime targeting Catholic churches.
Rodger William Moloney, now 73 and in ill health, was jailed for two years nine months by Justice Graham Panckhurst at his sentencing in the High Court in Christchurch.
Moloney, who still denies the offending, was found guilty at a trial in June on three charges of indecently assaulting boys under 16 and four of inducing them to do indecent acts.
He was acquitted of 16 other similar offences.
Justice Panckhurst congratulated one of the victims - a 46-year-old unemployed man living in Christchurch - who read his victim impact statement in court as the sentencing began.
The man said he had 338 criminal convictions, many of them for burglaries of Catholic churches.
He said he had been abused by four of the brothers at Marylands Special School in the 1970s, when the school at Halswell was run by the Order of St John of God.
"It has had an absolutely profound effect upon his life," Justice Panckhurst said.
"He has committed so many offences against churches of the same denomination from which the order comes, not to take property but simply to cause damage, no doubt in response for the damage he was done as a young child.".
Moloney was convicted on charges involving five boys. Some of the offending involved indecently touching them - two of them on the outside of their clothing - and others involved masturbation.
Defence counsel Greg King urged a sentence of home detention because of Moloney' age, ill health, and his lack of any other offending before Marylands or in the 30 years since.
Although Moloney maintained his innocence, he accepted that any sexual abuse of children was abhorrent and had long-lasting and devastating effects on people.
The court had been told that many former pupils from Marylands had ended up in prison, and would have friends and associates there.
"This will make a sentence of imprisonment physically difficult and dangerous for the prisoner who is not in a position to stand up and defend himself."
Crown prosecutor Kerryn Beaton said Moloney had used his position as prior at Marylands to prey upon the five children in his care, for his own sexual gratification, and effectively used his role to suppress their complaints. There had been no expression of remorse, or acceptance of responsibility.
Justice Panckhurst described it has systematic and opportunistic abuse of the boys and noted Moloney's "fall from grace" after five decades of work within St John of God. He is a trained pharmacist and psychiatric nurse.
"Your career and achievements within the order are dashed. Your life's work is discredited. Your legacy is now that of a child abuser rather than a man who had considerable talents and gave them to the order over so many years."
He noted St John of God had made substantial pastoral payments to the victims of abuse.
He noted that Moloney was unable to offer any compensation himself, having take n a vow of poverty when he joined the order.
Moloney will be deported to Australia - from where he was extradited for the trial - at the end of the sentence.
Another former Marylands priest, Brother Bernard McGrath, was jailed in 2006 for sexual offending against boys at the school.
- NZPA
