A CHRISTIAN Brother who embarked on a harrowing campaign of sexual abuse spanning almost two decades, including raping a nine-year-old boy while principal of a Ballarat school, will spend at least the next decade behind bars. Robert Charles Best, 70, was sentenced in front of a packed County Court room in Melbourne yesterday morning, where he was pelted with abuse by angry victims before being escorted out of the courtroom.“Suck it up,” one victim yelled.“You’re a dirty (expletive) dog,” another said, while a third called him a “maggot”.Best sexually abused 11 boys while teaching at three Victorian schools between 1969 and 1988, including at St Alipius Christian Brothers School in Ballarat.Judge Roy Punshon sentenced Best to 14 years and nine months imprisonment with a non-parole period of 11 years and three months.Best had earlier pleaded guilty to, or had been found guilty of, 27 child sex offences relating to six separate trials, including one count of buggery, 22 counts of unlawful and indecent assault on a person under 16, and two counts of aggravated indecent assault on a person under 16. Most of his victims were aged between eight and 11, and also included boys from St Leo’s Christian Brothers College at Box Hill and St Joseph’s College in Geelong.Judge Punshon said Best had been callous as he took advantage of young and vulnerable boys, five of whom had been students at the Ballarat school.The court was told that one victim was only nine and suffered from a hearing impairment when he was raped by Best. Judge Punshon said the boy thought he was going to die and had lost consciousness during the ordeal. When he complained, he was beaten.Judge Punshon said the victims were young and immature and felt powerless and unable to complain.“Everyone of your victims was a vulnerable student,” he said. “Some were particularly vulnerable with an underlying disability or injury or some other susceptibility.“You have caused a great deal of human damage and misery.”When delivering his sentence, Judge Punshon took into account that Best had not offended in the past 23 years, but said this may have been because of limited access to “age-appropriate boys” while teaching secondary school students.Judge Punshon elected not to detail victim impact statements delivered during the trial, but said “the statements as a whole are a salutary and powerful reminder of the devastating and long-lasting effect that sexual offending against children can have.”The court was told that Best remains a Christian Brother and has not been asked to leave the order.He undertook teacher training between 1963 and 1966, before moving to Launceston to embark on his first teaching position. In 1968 Best was transferred to St Alipius, where he soon commenced his campaign of sexual abuse.Yesterday Christian Brothers Oceania released a statement offering their “sincere and unreserved apology to those former students who were abused by Robert Best”.