Priest jailed for sexual abuse

Teesside Crown Court was told that Father Michael Dunn was a "young, trendy priest" when he went to his first parish in 1975, the Church of Christ The King in Thornaby-on-Tees.

But over a 15 month-period he sexually abused a boy who was aged 13 when it began.

The abuse happened in the church presbytery, at the boy's school, in Dunn's parents' home in Hull and on a pilgrimage to a holy shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham in Norfolk.

The priest, 55, was arrested last year when his victim, now a married man with a child, went to the police.

Dunn admitted the offences straight away saying that he had been waiting for 30 years for the police to call, said prosecutor Yvonne Taylor.

The victim told police that the abuse left him struggling in his personal and professional life, and he was treated for depression.

Dunn was interviewed on October 29 last year - at the time he was the parish priest of St Francis of Assisi in Hull.

He received a telephone call asking him to report to Hull police, where an officer asked him: "How do you feel about it now ?".

Miss Taylor said that that the priest replied: "I have lived with guilt for the last 30 years, every day I have lived with the fear of the telephone call I got from you last Wednesday."

He told them: "I can honestly say I have struggled hard to be a good priest."

Magistrates and prison officers were among 58 people who wrote references to the court, and others travelled from Hull to support him.

Judge Peter Armstrong told him: "An immediate prison sentence is inevitable for your abuse of trust in a gross manner.

"I have no doubt that you sought to atone for what you saw as sinful conduct as well as illegal conduct."

Dunn, of Wembley Park Avenue, Hull, was jailed for 18 months after he pleaded guilty to two specimen charges of gross indecency and one of indecent assault in 1975 and 1976.

He was also ordered to register as a sex offender for ten years.