Hickman had pleaded guilty to sexual penetration of a child, and indecent dealing with a child in Perth in 1990.<\/p>\n
WA District Court Judge Karen Shepherd described his actions as a “breach of trust” given his position, and too serious to justify a suspended term.<\/p>\n
He was sentenced to two years and six months in jail, to be served immediately at Casuarina Prison.<\/p>\n
![\"a](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/fd382db9ab4a41b2f693f68d1b35b67c.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
Hickman’s history of sexual offences against children began in the late 1970s, the court has heard.\u00a0 (ABC News: David Weber)<\/p>\n
The court heard the Perth victims were aged 11 and 13 when Hickman flew over from Sydney on official business in 1990, and attended a dinner with other members of the Catholic Church at their foster home.<\/p>\n
The man the girls knew as “Father Bob” then went into their bedroom to give “goodnight prayers” and read out a bible story.<\/p>\n
He told one of the girls he was going to give her a “special blessing” before touching her indecently.<\/p>\n
![\"Crucifix\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/4040a8835c33114554d58a47a3936c72.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
The Perth victims told the court the sexual abuse had deeply affected them. (ABC News)<\/p>\n
The priest then groped the other girl in a similar manner before leaving the room, saying “goodnight girls, God bless, it was lovely to meet you”.<\/p>\n
The court heard the girls had then cried themselves to sleep.<\/p>\n
One girl reported the incident to the foster mother, who initially dismissed her as a liar.<\/p>\n
Nine years later, the foster mother reported the incident to the Catholic Church’s WA Professional Standards Office, and received a letter of apology from Hickman.<\/p>\n
The church offered money as part of a non-disclosure agreement.<\/p>\n
‘A very evil soul’<\/p>\n
In a statement read out in court by prosecutor Rachael McCallum, one of the victims described the impact of the abuse as “immeasurable”.<\/p>\n
The woman said she had to carry the burden of having been sexually abused, and being told she was a liar, at a time when she was living in a new environment after her parents had died.<\/p>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/3833a55d4e23328cdc9afca86664dff8.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
Prosecutor Rachael McCallum read the victim impact statements in court. (ABC News: David Weber)<\/p>\n
She “had to keep everything inside”, the statement said, going on to describe Hickman as “a very evil soul”.<\/p>\n
The other victim provided a statement in which she said the abuse had changed her life “forever”, but she had decided to forgive Hickman for her own mental health.<\/p>\n
“I choose not to give you any power from this day forward,” she said in the statement.<\/p>\n
Health issues<\/p>\n
Hickman was investigated by the child abuse squad in 2015 and arrested and extradited to WA from NSW 10 years later.<\/p>\n
His lawyer Simon Freitag said he had served five years of a ten year prison sentence in NSW, from 2015 to 2020, for sexual offences against multiple victims.<\/p>\n
In 2001, he received a suspended sentence, and a community corrections order had been imposed for similar offending in 2024.<\/p>\n
Mr Freitag said Hickman’s offences occurred from the late 1970s to the early 1990s, but he had “not reoffended in decades… He is not presently a danger to children”.<\/p>\n
Hickman is recovering from cancer surgery and has several other health issues.<\/p>\n
He will eligible for parole after serving 15 months in prison.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A former Catholic priest and serial paedophile who sexually abused two young girls in foster care 36 years…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":904987,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[473134,473133,473131,473135,10355,43,2732,44,149060,14666,86,92739,473130,473132,176539,41,39,42,40,14665,45],"class_list":["post-904986","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-casuarina-prison","tag-catholic-priest","tag-catholic-priest-robert-hickman","tag-catholic-sex-abuse","tag-child-sexual-abuse","tag-headlines","tag-jail","tag-news","tag-paedophile","tag-perth-courts","tag-perth-news","tag-priest","tag-priest-sentenced-over-sex-abuse","tag-robert-hickman","tag-sex-abuse","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-wa-courts","tag-wa-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/904986","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=904986"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/904986\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/904987"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=904986"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=904986"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=904986"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}