Retired priest caught ‘grooming 14-year-old boy online’ in Sydney sting By Perry Duffin December 24, 2024 https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw...y-online-in-sydney-sting-20241224-p5l0ii.html A retired priest has been arrested while allegedly trying to groom a 14-year-old boy online. Earlier this year, Facebook identified an account allegedly sharing child abuse material overseas, closed the account and contacted police. Guy Hartcher was arrested at Pendle Hill in Sydney on Monday.Credit: NSW Police Police say they tracked the account to 77-year-old Guy Hartcher and began posing as a 14-year-old boy online, Superintendent Jayne Doherty told media on Tuesday. “Investigators, purporting to be a 14-year-old boy, chatted online with that person, who then shared with us a number of sexually explicit photographs and discussed, in detail, sexually explicit acts he would like to commit with that boy,” Doherty said. Hartcher allegedly made plans to meet the boy at Pendle Hill and arrived at lunchtime on Monday. Doherty said Hartcher was surprised when he was confronted by detectives from undercover online Strikeforce Trawler. He was arrested and charged with procuring a person under 16 years old for sex and sending indecent material to a person under 16. “It’s extremely serious. We have a 77-year-old male, who we allege has turned up to meet a 14-year-old boy for sexual activity. There is no more serious or grave offence against a child,” Doherty said. Doherty said her detectives were now digging into Hartcher’s seized electronic devices and believed he had had “similar conversations” in the past. Doherty said Hartcher had no previous convictions. Hartcher had been living in retirement in Sydney for the last decade after his time in the Vincentian Fathers and Brothers ended.
2015 kidnapping and beheading of Coptic Christians in Libya On 12th February 2015, the Islamic State (IS) released a report in their online magazine Dabiq showing photos of 21 Egyptian Christian construction workers that they had kidnapped in the city of Sirte, Libya, and whom they reported had been killed. The men, who came from different villages in Egypt, 13 of them from Al-Our, Minya Governorate, were kidnapped in Sirte in two separate attacks on 27 December 2014, and in January 2015. On 15 February, a video was released showing their murder by beheading. This was not the first time that Coptic Egyptians in Libya had been the subject of abuse for political reasons, a pattern that goes back to the 1950s. In 2014, a militia group in eastern Libya declared its affiliation with IS and then took over parts of Derna in late 2014. People allied to the group claimed responsibility for attacks across the country, including the Corinthia Hotel attack in January 2015. On 19 April 2015, IS released another video, which showed the murder of about 30 Ethiopian Christians. The victims, all but one members of the Coptic Orthodox Church, were formally declared saints and martyrs in February of 2015 by Pope Tawadros II of Alexandria. In 2023, Pope Francis announced that the 21 Coptic men murdered by IS would also be commemorated by the Catholic Church and listed within the Roman Martyrology in what was described as a major ecumenical decision. The martyrs are commemorated on 15 February (civil calendar) in both churches.