A Salvation Army chaplain who told children they were "making God happy" while he sexually assaulted them will be allowed to stay in his aged care home.
In a special hearing in May, dementia-ridden Raymond Maurice Pethybridge, 90, was found guilty of 11 historical child sexual offences when he worked in Sydney and regional NSW for the Salvation Army.
In the NSW District Court on Friday, Judge Alister Abadee sentenced Pethybridge to a limited term of eight years' detention.
He will continue his detention at his nursing home in Greenacre before he is referred to the NSW Mental Health Tribunal to assess his declining cognitive health.
He will have the same privileges as other nursing home residents including courtyard and garden access, however won't be allowed to leave except for medical appointments.
Between 1958 and 1986 Pethybridge repeatedly sexually assaulted five girls under the age of 16 in NSW.
His victims were being babysat, sitting on his lap, jumping into his arms in the deep end of a pool or working alongside the Salvation Army chaplain when they were sexually assaulted.
Pethybridge was previously found guilty of multiple sexual offences in 2018, but successfully appealed the convictions and was retried.
He then won a second appeal but was ultimately found to be unfit to face another trial.
During his special hearing, Judge Abadee did not have confidence in Pethybridge's wife as a witness, finding "she was there to doggedly defend her husband".
The judge made "full allowance for the difficult predicament she was in, in having the man she had been married to for decades being accused of serious crimes.
"For someone like Mrs Pethybridge, a devoted servant of The Salvation Army with a strong religious bent, I formed the impression that if the charges against her husband were made good, she would feel a great sense of shame (if she hasn't already)."
As the judge read out the details of his offending at his sentencing on Friday, Ms Pethybridge fiddled with her hearing aids.
