He entered the seminary when he was 17 years of age. He completed his primary school education at St Thomas Catholic School at Lewisham. He won a full bursary in Grade 6 which paid for his secondary education at Christian Brothers High School Lewisham. He entered St Columbus Seminary Springwood, New South Wales in 1958 at the age of 17 years. After completing studies in philosophy over the following three years he graduated to St Patrick’s Seminary Manly New South Wales at the age of 21 years. He studied theology for the next four years. Seminary training in this area was notoriously challenging due to its impersonal, regimented and isolated structure. The deleterious consequences of such formation experiences has been thoroughly examined in psychological literature. He was ordained as a Catholic priest at the age of 24. At the age of 50 in 1999 the offender was appointed as the Vicar General of the Parramatta Diocese of the Catholic Church. He resigned from his role as a Catholic priest following the first set of charges being laid. He was incarcerated after pleading guilty to the allegations from 25 November 1994 to 24 November 1996 aged 54 to 56 years, serving his first term of imprisonment for five counts of indecent assault on a male. The indecent assaults were perpetrated against one boy who was approximately 14 years old when the offender was ministering at the Liverpool Parish.