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Legal Aid solicitor Nerissa Key told Wollongong District Court on Friday the retired 80-year-old Fairy Meadow parish priest suffered age-related health issues and his admission to hospital made it unlikely he would attend court for his sentencing, scheduled for March 11.

In November last year, Sharkey was too frail to enter the dock when he entered guilty pleas to indecent assault and buggery of a boy he abused for four years, starting when the victim was 12 years old.

One of the assaults with which he was charged occurred inside St John Vianney’s Catholic Church.

The abuse did not stop when Sharkey moved to St Bernard’s Catholic Church in Batemans Bay.

The first incident occurred towards the end of the 1969 school year, when the victim agreed to help Sharkey conduct afternoon Mass at St John Vianney’s Church, where at the conclusion of the service the priest assaulted the boy.

Sharkey then threatened the boy by telling him he would go to Hell if he told his parents.

Similar assaults occurred within the church until Sharkey was transferred to Batemans Bay in December 1971.

Several months later he asked the victim to stay with him in Batemans Bay and during the September school holidays the boy complied after the priest threatened to expose their activities.

The boy, “frozen in fear”, was raped on the second night of the visit. Two years later he was raped again. Sharkey retired from the church in 1988.

On the day Sharkey entered guilty pleas to the court, Wollongong Catholic Bishop Peter Ingham issued a public apology on behalf of the church and said he was deeply saddened by the abuse.

Judge Paul Conlon on Friday agreed to delay sentencing and ordered Sharkey to appear in Wollongong District Court on April 7.