After nine separate trials spanning more than a decade, a former dorm master from Sydney’s prestigious St Joseph’s College in Hunters Hill has been jailed for sexually assaulting a student.
Fairfax report that 71-year-old John Dennis Maguire was sentenced yesterday to one year and nine months jail for six separate assaults on an 11-year-old boy in his care, in 1983.
Maguire worked at the school between 1978 and 2005.
A large number of former students and parents were present at the sentencing, among them several students who had made sexual assault complaints against Maguire, which were not proven.
“The wolf has finally been exposed,” one former student said.
“The victims were told time and time again they were crying wolf, that they were making it up. Now we know – the wolf was real.”
Each of the complaints against Maguire was heard separately, with each jury unaware of the other complaints. He was acquitted seven times, and had one hung jury, before his conviction last November, in connection to the 1983 assault.
The court heard that Maguire had carefully groomed the victim and his parents, after promising to look after him, subjecting him to a series of harrowing assaults in the dorms.
“The offender was like a father figure to the victim,” the judge noted in his sentencing remarks, adding that Maguire “violated that trust”, with no regard for the victim’s childhood, well-being or future.
In spite of the short length of the sentence, the mother of one student, who had also made a complaint against Maguire, described a sense of vindication at his guilty verdict.
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