The average age of his victims was 11 years old
In Australia, 853 people have made a claim or substantiated complaint of child sexual abuse against one or more Christian Brothers, with 75% of victims under the age of 13 at the time, a royal commission has heard.
The royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse has turned its attention to the Christian Brothers as the third round of its hearings into the diocese of Ballarat began on Monday. A religious community within the Catholic church, the Christian Brothers primarily worked in educational facilities for children.
Where they had a selection of children to predate on, and a veil of piety to hide behind. Perfect setup, innit.
The commission’s data showed that the highest number of claims of child sexual abuse were against a brother identified only as Brother CCK, who had 46 complaints made against him about incidents in Victoria and Tasmania. The average age of his victims was 11 years old and the abuse occurred between 1963 and 1987, including in Ballarat.
Another Brother, Stephen Farrell, a Christian Brother at St Alpius Boys’ School in Ballarat East, had allegations of sexual abuse made against him from six people, with the abuse allegedly occurring between 1971 and 1974. In 1997, Farrell was convicted of nine counts of indecent assault against two boys aged nine and 10 at the school but his two-year prison sentence was wholly suspended.
If you’re a guy with a taste for raping children…what do you do? You have a think about where a lot of children can be found, then you have a think about how to get away with it.
One, Brother Edward Dowlan, “made little attempt to conceal his behaviour”, Barlow said, frequently placing his hands down boys’ pants while they walked around. In a previous commission hearing about Ballarat held last year, the commission heard from a witness that he was raped by Dowlan.
It was a survival of the fittest environment, Barlow said, describing how the Brothers beat him, including bashing him on the head, when he was 15 years old.
He said he tried to stick up for the younger children who he knew who were being abused by the Brothers but was not taken seriously, even when he called his mother from the school and told her what was happening.
“Looking back at my time at St Patrick’s we were in a dysfunctional and closed environment where the abnormal was normal,” Barlow said.
“As 15 to 16 year olds, we had no idea really of the outside codes of ethics, morality and justice, so it was not a notable thing for us to see that these things were happening.”
So perfect for the predators. Not so great for the prey.
Meanwhile Catholic theology lecturer Joel Hodge responded to Tim Minchin’s song criticising Cardinal Pell by bemoaning the way such strong language debased public debate:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-02-22/hodge-minchin-pell-the-sorry-state-of-public-debate/7189568
My feelings on this are not the sort that are suited to polite society, because honesty rarely is.
Reminds me of the time I saw my favourite after-school worker in the news one day. At first, I was pleasantly surprised as this man was probably the most kindly of the staff, but was not above giving me a stern lecture when I beat kids up*.
I hung around to see why he was in the news while reminiscing about those halcyon days. Turns out he was under arrest for posession of child porn. Fuck.
*I was a bully back then.
‘…we had no idea really of the outside codes of ethics, morality and justice, so it was not a notable thing for us to see that these things were happening.’
And that, my dears, is what ‘religious freedom’ turns out to mean. ‘Grooming.’ Whether sexual victims or obedient dupes filling the collection plates.