Former HK priest jailed for abuse

A former Roman Catholic priest has been sentenced to four and a half years in jail for abusing a 15-year-old altar boy in Hong Kong in the early 1990s.

Lau was defrocked in 1995

Michael Lau, 42, was found guilty last month of two counts of indecent assault, one of attempted sodomy and one of gross indecency.

Lau, who pleaded not guilty, is the first person associated with the Catholic clergy in the territory to be jailed for abusing a teenager in his care.

Hong Kong's Catholic Church was hit by a series of sex abuse cases last year. Lau is among at least eight priests or former priests who are accused of abusing children over the last 30 years.

'Heinous' crime

Addressing the District Court, Judge Maggie Poon described Lau's behaviour as "heinous" and said he betrayed the trust placed in him by the victim and his parents.

Judge Poon said Lau gave the boy: "an unwelcome introduction to some of the nastiest aspects of the sins of the flesh".

"The life of the victim was devastated throughout the (past) 11 years," she said. "The victim suffered a mental breakdown and the defendant had contributed to it."

The victim, who is now 27, is said to have suffered schizophrenia for years after the abuse.

One of Lau's defence lawyers, Bernard Chung, said they had not decided whether to appeal the case.

'Changed'

Mr Chung said Lau, now an insurance salesman, had changed since he got married in September 2002, just months after he was charged with the assault.

Lau was a trainee priest at the time of the abuses in 1991-92. He was defrocked in 1995 after an internal church investigation found he had twice molested the boy, but its findings were never reported to the police.

The Church has since begun referring serious cases to the police, after acknowledging it had previously failed to handle some of the allegations adequately.

It now says it is adopting a "zero tolerance" policy toward sexual abuse of children.

There are about a quarter of a million Roman Catholics in Hong Kong, and the Church runs more than 300 schools and nurseries. About 300 priests work in the former British colony.

The Hong Kong abuse cases mirror a child sex scandal that has rocked the Catholic Church worldwide.