A former church youth group leader raped an 11-year-old boy at least twice a month over two years but told the victim that the assaults were not against church teachings and therefore OK, a court has been told.

Simon Antony Jacobs has pleaded guilty to four charges against two boys who he repeatedly assaulted while he was a youth group leader in the Church of England Boys Society (CEBS) on Sydney’s north shore during the 1970s and 1980s, The Sydney Morning Herald reported.

Simon Antony Jacobs, 58, from North Sydney, has pleaded guilty to four charges against two boys while he was a leader in the Church of England Boys Society, or CEBS, at two churches on the north shore during the 1970s and 1980s.

The charges – one count of buggery and three counts of committing an indecent act – relate to offences committed while he supervised the boys, who were both 11, as a CEBS leader at Christ Church, St Ives, and St Swithuns, in Pymble.


Jacobs is also accused of molesting another two boys, both 10, during the same period.

At one point Victim A challenged Jacobs, saying he had read in Bible studies that a man should not have sex with another man, but Jacobs told him it was allowable because “they were not making babies”, the court heard.

In what is seeming to be a normal move, the church authorities appeared to have known about his criminal acts, an “moved him on”:

‘The record is unclear, but at some point, possibly after leaving Pymble, a note was made that he was not to be issued with a leaders warrant, which he would have required in order to move to leadership in any CEBS group in another parish,” a spokesman for the Anglican Church said.