Many were groped - some while reading the Bible during religion classes, after confession, at youth clubs, during "male bonding weekends" or in their altar boy garb while preparing for church services.

But as the 29 pages of agreed facts tendered to Sydney District Court Judge Ronald Solomon yesterday showed, Denham restricted his most violent sexual assaults and rapes to the most vulnerable children in his care.

They were the quiet boys, the sons of violent or alcoholic parents or from families described as "extremely devout", "strict" or "ardent Catholics", who invited Denham to dinner but were ignorant of the crimes he committed against their children, sometimes within earshot.

Denham targeted boys left shocked and numbed by recent tragedies, like the boy who experienced a succession of family deaths, only to have a priest's "comfort" turn to forced sex and threats in his private quarters.

In a nearly empty Sydney District Court yesterday Denham sat in the dock in his prison greens and failed to make eye contact with anyone until he stood to say "Guilty" 25 times to crimes from the 1970s.

He was overweight and his hair was over-long, combed down flat and white against his head.

Men who knew him in his younger years describe a large man with dark hair and an "angry, leering face" who "looked evil".

"There was a saying at the school: 'Bums to the wall, Denham's on the crawl'," the agreed facts noted.

The boys knew, but as District Court Judge Helen Syme noted in her judgment in July 2010 after Denham pleaded guilty to child sex offences against 39 victims: "The ability of the offender to continue offending for so long, when there was clearly a view of him amongst the boys that he was a paedophile, calls into question the role of his supervisors."

"For reasons known only to them, other teachers and priests did not intervene to stop the abuse of which most of the students were aware," Judge Syme said.

Some boys reported Denham to adults, like the boy who told his mother the priest fondled his genitals, only to be told he was a "bad boy", or the boy whose father hit him for lying about the priest, only hours after the child was brutally raped.

Other boys reported Denham to school principal, the late Father Tom Brennan.

The agreed facts noted that Brennan did nothing when a boy repeatedly reported Denham's offences, and yelled, "How dare you make up these lies about a man of his stature" in response to another boy's complaint.

A victim of Denham who was 12 when the priest indecently assaulted him said he hoped Denham "rots in hell", but he wanted answers from the Catholic Church.

"Why did it take all of us victims to make all this happen when the Church knew about him so many years ago? Why didn't the Church report him to police?" the victim said.

"If victims hadn't come forward, he'd still be hidden away somewhere and no one would ever have known."

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