Disgraced Catholic clergymen Peter Comensoli and John Roberts face court

Instead, they preyed on them.

Six men, now well into adulthood, were just boys looking for spiritual and personal guidance when the now-disgraced Catholic clergymen took advantage of them in the worst way.

The pair appeared in Wollongong District Court on Thursday in separate, unrelated court cases.

Comensoli, who already served jail time in the 1990s for molesting two boys, was handed a suspended sentence for offences against three more boys stemming back to the 1960s.

Roberts, who confessed to molesting a student while teaching at Edmund Rice College in the late 1980s, had his sentencing stood over until next month.

Court documents reveal the two cases share striking similarities in terms of targeting vulnerable and impressionable young men, each of whom held their attacker’s religious position in high esteem.

Roberts had become a tutor to his 13-year-old victim and was regularly driving him to and from the university to study when he took him to a secluded spot on Mount Keira Road one day and raped him.

The sexual assaults continued for the rest of the year, and included an incident on school grounds, in which Roberts sneaked the boy into his own room.

Meantime, the court heard Comensoli preyed on child members of his congregation, often taking the opportunity to fondle their genitals under the guise of playing a wrestling game.

He molested one boy, aged just 11, while visiting the child’s family at their Ingleburn home.

Another victim, part of a children’s fellowship group led by Comensoli at the Shellharbour parish, was groped while the pair was alone in Comensoli’s private chambers.

In sparing Comensoli full-time jail on Thursday, Judge Andrew Haesler said the frail 77-year-old standing in front of him was not the same man he had been at the time of the offences.

He said there was no suggestion Comensoli had reoffended in the 22 years since his incarceration in 1994 and he was confident he did not present a risk to the public.

“He’s done all any offender could do to avoid repetition of his behaviour,” Judge Haesler said.