HE was told last year that he will likely die in jail, but this week detectives charged Francis William Cable, a former Hamilton Marist Brother, now 88, with three more counts of indecent assault against a boy dating back to the early 1970s.
On Monday, Strike Force Georgiana detectives, who first commenced investigations in 2012 into the alleged historical sexual and indecent assaults committed by Cable, arrested him again at the Metropolitan Remand and Reception Centre at Silverwater Correctional Centre and charged him with three counts of indecent assault on a male. Cable, also known as Brother Romuald, did not appear in Newcastle Local Court via audio visual link from Long Bay Correctional Centre on Thursday and the matter was adjourned until October 15.
The charges relate to one alleged victim, who detectives say Cable indecently assaulted on three occasions at Hamilton, Merewether and Myall Lake during 1971.
Cable, who turned 88 in May, was jailed for 16 years in 2015 after he was found guilty of sexually abusing two Hamilton Marist students, and entered guilty pleas to offences against 17 others at the Hamilton school and Pagewood Marist between 1960 and the 1970s.
He was charged with 14 offences against another five victims in 2017, but did not plead guilty until October, 2018. In March last year, Judge Roy Ellis sentenced Cable to a maximum of eight years in jail, with a non-parole period of five years, making him now eligible for parole in March, 2026, at the age of 94.
"The objective criminality by Mr Cable against so many for so long necessitates a sentence that means he is unlikely to survive the jail term," Judge Roy Ellis said in Newcastle District Court last year. "He will be approaching his 94th birthday when he is to be released, should he survive that long."
