Christian Brother Abused Schoolboys

By Angela Pownall
West Australian
February 16, 2013

http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/-/breaking/16157778/christian-brother-abused-schoolboys/

The West Australian © Abuser: Brother Daniel McMahon. Picture: Supplied

Former Perth Catholic schoolboys have revealed they were sexually abused by a Christian Brother who taught for 20 years at prestigious WA schools run by the religious order.

Three men have told _The Weekend West _they were molested, and in one case raped, by Brother Daniel Virgil McMahon when they were schoolboys.

A former teacher, who worked with McMahon at Aquinas College, said he complained about his behaviour at the school, yet McMahon continued working with, and abusing, children.

They want the case investigated by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

McMahon also taught at Trinity College, Christian Brothers College, Highgate, and St Patrick's College in Geraldton before he began counselling children as the order's vocations director. He moved to Tasmania in 1990, where he was ordained as a priest and lived until his death in May.

WA Christian Brother Peter Negus confirmed the order received complaints about abuse perpetuated by McMahon and other brothers. "In WA we have had hundreds, well over 200 while I've been working doing this over the past 15 years," Brother Negus said. "If their story is correct, most of the time it's correct, there's some apology made by us," he said.

_The Weekend West _understands the Catholic Church has made settlements with McMahon's victims.

One said he was an 11-year-old Aquinas boarder when McMahon abused him twice in 1965. Another man was a pupil at St Mark's in Bedford when McMahon, then vocations director, raped him in 1988.

Don Lowrey, who taught at Aquinas from 1976 to 2000, said he reported his suspicions and allegations made to him by former pupils that McMahon was abusing boys to the headmaster Terry Hann, but said he felt "brushed off".

Mr Hann, Aquinas headmaster from 1979 to 1986, said he received no such complaint and never had any sense McMahon was involved in abuse of pupils.

"That didn't come before me as the principal at any stage," he said.

"Anything like that would have gone straight to my deputy, the school board and the Christian Brothers. I'm not a person who would brush that off. We were alert to anything like that in terms of behaviour of staff."