Former Victorian priest Father Frank Klep was sentenced to 10 and a half years in prison in 2014 for 15 child sex offences.
The abuses occurred throughout the 1970s and ‘80s while Klep was a teacher at Salesian College Rupertswood in Melbourne’s northern suburbs.
Klep was in charge of the school’s sick bay and abused several boys aged 11 to 15 when they came to him seeking treatment.
He was born in Holland on 3 October 1943 into a family of nine children. Klep and his family emigrated to Australia in 1953, and 10-year-old Klep attended Salesian College Chadstone in Melbourne’s south east.
He joined the Salesian order at 18, and taught at Catholic schools in South Australia and Tasmania before relocating to the US in 1968 to further his theological studies.
He returned to Melbourne and was ordained as a priest in 1972 where he spent more than two decades teaching at Ravenswood.
Klep was relocated to Samoa after being convicted of child sex offences in 1994. During this time, the Salesians illegally concealed his Australian criminal conviction from the Samoan authorities until he was finally deported from Samoa in 2004 after more of his victims came forward to Australian police.
He was convicted for a second time in 2005, and found guilty of additional child sex abuses charges in 2014. He has currently served three years of his 10-and-a-half year sentence.
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Image Source: ABC
