By Vivian Waller
The Age
August 9, 2011
http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/contributors/sins-of-brothers-demand-inquiry-20110808-1ij3b.html
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| Convicted paedophile and Christian Brother Robert Best and his lawyer arriving at the court. Photo: Ken Irwin |
Christian Brother Robert Best, now due to serve out 14 years and nine months in jail, didn't tell us anything about his crimes. From the harrowing statements of those he attacked, however, we know much about the destruction he brought to their lives.
Paedophiles insinuate themselves into environments where they have access to children. The innocence of children, possessed with no intellectual framework within which to understand - let alone explain or report deviously plotted attacks - further minimises any chance of apprehension. We know this means that paedophiles continue unchecked, working from victim to victim with impunity, sometimes targeting children in the same family.
Most of the convictions recorded against Best in this recent trial have been for what we might call relatively minor acts of indecent assault - the simple ''touch up''. It is clear that Best targeted students he found in vulnerable situations - one had a broken collarbone, others were injured on the football field or complained of feeling ill. He touched them looking for signs of complicity that he might use as an introduction to a more involved sexual encounter. Evidence given during the plea hearing included troubling details of group sexual encounters that Best arranged involving more than one student.
While Best is saying nothing about his crimes, even going so far as to indicate to a psychologist who assessed him that the accusations must be a matter of mistaken identity, it is not difficult to reason that Best's victims may number in the hundreds.
It is a simple truth that other paedophiles at Ballarat's St Alipius school, where Best was the principal, were involved as co-conspirators and offenders in their own right.
St Alipius has the tragic distinction of possessing a teaching staff that included convicted paedophile Brother Edward Dowlan, convicted paedophile Brother Stephen Francis Farrell, and, as school chaplain, convicted paedophile Father Gerald Ridsdale. One victim reports that he confided in his class teacher that Best had raped him. The teacher, also a Christian Brother, forcibly and repeatedly struck the grade 3 child until he retracted the statement.
We know also that, on one occasion, Best was interrupted by another Christian Brother, who, in a gross act of indifference, simply smiled and closed the door.
St Alipius was not the only hotspot of paedophilic trouble for the Christian Brothers. There have been allegations of sexual abuse made by former state wards of the St Augustine's Boys Home in Geelong and the St Vincent's Boys Home in South Melbourne, both run by the Christian Brothers. The police have received reports of sexual abuse in relation to Christian Brothers Donald Pascal Alford, Wilfred Eastmure, William Thomas McGee and Julian Hackett - all of whom had responsibility for the care of adolescent boys in orphanages. These Brothers died before the complaints could be the subject of investigations by the police. Many of these cases have been, or are currently, the subject of civil claims for damages.
But the scars remain because children, suffering attacks such as these from persons in positions of trust and authority over them, are usually left to deal with the burning sense of trauma and frightened bewilderment on their own. Most often attempts are made to bury the memories, but, sadly, the nightmare re-emerges later in life once coping mechanisms fail.
Statements of impact from victims and studies into the psychology of those affected tell a story of catastrophic psychological destabilisation. Many of Best's recent victims said that, during his attacks, they thought they were going to die. They reported experiencing the sort of trauma a soldier might experience in a house-to-house firefight in Iraq, but, here, all we have is an eight-year-old child confronting the fear of dying in the back corner of a classroom his parents told him he would be safe in.
A bipartisan state-led inquiry into criminal activities of various Christian Brothers, the response of the Christian Brothers as an organisation, and the complaints and reporting procedures adopted by them and the broader church is warranted and long overdue.
An inquiry would not only help the families of boys who have since killed themselves (police estimate suicides at somewhere close to 30) come to terms with the suffering of their loved ones, but it may also help more victims still suffering in silence to come forward for treatment. It may also help us as a community to ensure that concentrations of abuse, and organisational conspiracies of silence, no longer blight our young or vulnerable.
Dr Vivian Waller is a lawyer representing victims of Robert Best and other Christian Brothers, one of whom contributed to this piece.
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