A REIGN OF TERROR
Paedophile priest jailed for attacks on young girls
A NOTORIOUS paedophile priest who terrorised young girls at a North Queensland Catholic primary school throughout the 1970s and early 1980s has been jailed for historical abuse of two further girls during that period.
One of his two additional victims, a 55-year-old woman who was molested six times by Townsville-born man Neville Joseph Creen, 80, was present in Beenleigh District Court to read her impact statement into the record.
In the course of a lengthy, emotionally charged statement, she told the court she ate glass at age 11 to stay home from her Mount Isa school, Creen’s hunting ground, to avoid the perverted priest’s attention.
Creen, who was one of the parish priests at the school was forced to leave the church in 1994 when the whispers about his behaviour became a roar, but it was not until September 2003 that he was held to account for the first time.
Creen was then sentenced to 3½ years’ jail for 34 sexual offences against 18 young girls, to be suspended after serving 14 months.
On Tuesday, he pleaded guilty to an additional seven charges, six of indecent treatment of girls under the age of 14 and one of indecent treatment of females.
His offending against these two further women, who both came forward in the wake of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, occurred between 1977–1981, when he left the school.
His offending against one of the women, who was aged nine or 10 in 1981, involved molesting her in the confessional.
The court heard how the young girl was confused by what had happened and told a nun she couldn’t get comfortable sitting on Father Creen because he “had a piece of wood in his lap”.
By contrast, his abuse of the second woman was protracted and repeated, beginning shortly after his arrival in Mount Isa and occurring throughout 1976–77 when she was aged 10–11, followed by a horrible coda in Townsville in 1981.
The court heard the groundwork of this abuse was laid in 1976, when the girl’s mother was ill and spending much time in Townsville.
Creen, who was born in Townsville and spent many of his early years there, would inquire solicitously after the victim, which progressed to “firmly hugging, tickling her ribs, rubbing her back” and, when she began wearing a bra for the first time, commenting lasciviously on it.
The first time he molested her was at a school camp at Lake Moondarra. Further abuse occurred in the nunnery and in a friend’s pool, where he digitally raped her.
The girl repeatedly tried to tell teachers, nuns and her mother, none of whom believed her, the court heard.
“How can you say that? He is a good man, he is a priest,” the court heard her mother told her.
According to the now 55-year-old’s victim impact statement, she became ostracised from most of her family at the instigation of her mother, who refused to believe the priest could have done such evil.
Creen was sentenced to serve three months of a 15-month sentence, which would then be suspended for two years.
His sentence was reduced because he had previously been sentenced in 2003 (and again in 2004 when two further women came forward) for what the court viewed as the same course of offending.