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	Priest Guilty to Child Sex Charges By Kate Lahey The Sunday Mail [Australia] October 25, 2005 A CATHOLIC priest has pleaded guilty to 13 charges of indecent assault against teenage boys in Melbourne during the 1970s. Francis (Frank) Gerard Klep, 62, answered "guilty" to each of the 13 charges in the Melbourne County Court today. He was charged in 1998, a month after the church sent him to Samoa to work at a Salesian theological college. Klep was ordered out of Samoa in 2004 after a US newspaper asked Victoria Police why he was allowed to teach there when he was wanted for child sex offences in Australia. Before his arrest, Klep slipped in and out of Australia three times without being detected, a court heard last year. Detective Senior Constable John Raglus told Melbourne Magistrates' Court last year that he had contacted the Samoan government, which discovered Klep had failed to tell authorities of a 1994 conviction for sexually assaulting two teenagers in the 1970s. He was arrested on arrival in Melbourne in June 2004, hours after being ordered out of Samoa. Today in court, Klep appeared calm. The 13 charges of unlawful and indecent assault on boys, several aged under 16, cover a range of offences committed at Sunbury, on Melbourne's north-west fringe, between 1973 and 1979. Klep, a member of the Salesian order, was a teacher at the order's Rupertswood College in Sunbury at the time and eventually became principal. The US newspaper, the Dallas Morning News, conducted a year-long investigation into the Catholic Church's handling of accused paedophiles and ran a picture of Klep handing out lollies to Samoan schoolchildren. Klep now lives in a supervised Salesian community house in the Melbourne suburb of Ascot Vale. The head of the order's Australia-Pacific region, Father Ian Murdoch, said the church had covered Klep's legal fees. "As with anyone else while still a member of a religious order, and in keeping with the Catholic Church's Towards Healing protocol, Klep's legal fees currently are being paid for by the Salesians," he said. Mr Murdoch said it was "right and just" that Klep's charges be answered in court. "The protection of young people in our care lies at the very core of our mission," he said in a statement. Klep's defence counsel, Julie Sutherland, told the court she wanted her client to undergo a thorough psychological examination, which would take about six weeks. Justice Frances Hogan extended Klep's bail and adjourned the matter until December 9.
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