By Steve Butcher
The Age
June 4, 2011
http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/long-road-to-justice-for-young-boys-betrayed-20110603-1fks9.html
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| Robert Charles Best. Photo: Ballarat Courier |
THEY might be seen in a flash, or over years of familiarity, but many people have unique features that you never forget.
Physical signatures such as a facial scar or an unconvincing wig, crooked teeth, or a bow tie worn daily create an identity. Other peculiarities spark bad memories.
In Melbourne's County Court, men who as schoolboys were subjected to sexual assaults by Robert Charles Best (pictured) have since late last year until recently been telling jurors of Best's ghastly crimes. Most also spoke of Best's hands and those large, hairy fingers and knuckles reaching for them …
Their evidence of the Christian Brother's red eyes and rhythmic breathing completed a terrifying picture for jurors, who found Best guilty at six separate trials.
Now 70 and in Port Phillip Prison, the notorious paedophile not only faces long jail terms arising from those trials but also for what he has belatedly admitted. He pleaded guilty this week at a further hearing to offences against three boys, including a nine-year-old.
Best's 27 offences against 11 boys covered in the recent run of cases span almost 20 years from 1969. He was acquitted in two trials. In addition he was given a suspended jail sentence in 1996 for assaults against five boys when principal of a Ballarat East primary school. He later won a retrial against another conviction for similar offences.
A Ballarat investigator, Detective Sergeant Kevin Carson, later reopened a brief against Best that related to events at a Box Hill school, and collated other files as more victims came forward. The brief had not been authorised for prosecution years ago.
There were some people who chose to die rather than relive their torment.
One complainant, called ''David'' for legal reasons, had not seen Best since the late 1980s, but he remembered the Catholic educator's intimidating presence at St Joseph's College, Geelong.
''He behaved aggressively,'' he said, ''like he just owned the school.''
A teacher once told him how Best would randomly enter classrooms and ''blow up'', scaring students, yelling or throwing a chair, intimidation David now believes was a protection device.
David, now 37, was 11 when he became the victim of the indecent and aggravated assaults Best has admitted committing against him. He tells The Saturday Age they changed the whole pattern of his life. ''My life story stems from those few months,'' David says. ''General dysfunction, relationships not working out, not holding down work … I just put it in a box, basically, immediately, and shut it away, so that's what I did until 2004.'' He then saw a counsellor and that ''opened the gates''.
''These memories came out and I almost had memories like photographs and I assigned them into a chronology, like a file in my head,'' David says. ''I'm not making it up and I'm not mad,'' he reassures himself.
Not religious, despite his parents' beliefs, he accepted his father's urgings to seek help from Towards Healing, a process the Catholic Church introduced in 1996 in an attempt to assist complainants and manage cases.
He found that process, which he started in mid-2005, a ''farce''. He says it included the suggestion of a ''pastoral'' meeting with Best and another Christian Brother who was alleged to have been present when David was assaulted. He says he was asked what he wanted from the process and rather than saying money, told them: ''I want you to do the right thing, take him out of service and put the bugger in jail.''
He underwent psychological assessment, financed by Towards Healing, which later arranged for two retired police officers to interview him. ''The assessors are unable to conclude,'' David reads from their report, ''on the balance of probabilities that any of the allegations can be substantiated.''
After being told a record of his interview did not exist, he and others suspected after his cross-examination at a preliminary hearing that Best and his lawyers had obtained it. ''Towards Healing is damage control,'' David tells The Age. ''It's a way to get information to usher complainants their way, to screen them before they go to police.''
Until his guilty pleas, Best - as was his right - had every accuser give evidence and undergo relentless cross-examination. He gave evidence when it was his story against a single accuser's, in all but one trial.
In court last Monday, the remnants of his educational authority (a strong voice and a conservative suit) and his criminality (his admissions and those hands, folded on his lap) were on show.
David arrived at court that afternoon with supporters, including Anne O'Brien, a senior social worker with the Office of Public Prosecutions' witness assessment service, who has spent two years guiding Best's victims.
Everyone on the Crown team, led by prosecutors Amanda Forrester, John Livitsanos and Penny Lucas, had spent a nervous Sunday night worrying if Best, who is due back in court for a plea hearing next month, would bring an end to the long and bitterly fought process and plead guilty before Judge Roy Punshon. Unable to sleep, Livitsanos resorted to his new meat grinder and turned out sausages, while David had a quiet drink alone.
''I wasn't worried,'' he now says. ''It was a sunny day and I just turned up and I wasn't worried for some reason.
''I just thought, it's going to happen and it did happen and it didn't come from the f---ing church, man.''
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