Payout for Molesters Spared Taxpayers: Church

By Barney Zwartz
Brisbane Times
May 3, 2013

http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/national/payout-for-molesters-spared-taxpayers-church-20130503-2iyhl.html

The Christian Brothers Catholic order spent more than $1 million defending serial paedophile Robert Best, the order has told a Victorian inquiry into how churches handled child sexual abuse.

The order also paid $10,000 to a private investigator to spy on a victim of abuser Ted Dowlan. It paid for legal advice to protect Dowlan's assets in civil lawsuits and gave him $125,000 when he left the order.

Any institution is as sick as its secrets, and there was a culture that kept things secret.

But brothers appearing on behalf of the order denied there were cultural problems within it.

The order apologised for the ''repulsive'' and ''inexcusable'' betrayal by the abusers and said most of the offenders had themselves been abused earlier.

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''I cannot defend and will not try to defend the indefensible,'' said Brother Julian McDonald, deputy leader of the order in Australia and the region.

The Christian Brothers ran St Alipius Parish School in Ballarat where four paedophile members taught in the early 1970s and where the parish priest was paedophile Gerald Ridsdale.

Brian Brandon, the executive officer for professional standards, agreed that the order had paid $1.2 million to defend Best in three cases from 1996 to 2010. The last case cost $980,000, but he suggested this had saved taxpayers, including victims, the cost and could be seen as generosity.

Brother Julian said leaders at the time saw child sex abuse as a moral failure rather than a criminal matter. Committee member Andrea Coote said that up until 1949 ''buggering children'' attracted the death penalty - how could the order's leaders not realise it was a serious crime?

Brother Julian replied that sexual abuse had always been a crime - ''a terrible, terrible crime that's ruined lives and we know that and we knew that and every leader of the Christian Brothers should have known that''.

Committee member David O'Brien said the order's defence of Dowlan, including misleading police, showed that, far from being repentant, it was protective of Dowlan, Best and others.

Brother Julian said the order received 266 complaints, of which 20 were not pursued. It paid $10.5 million in compensation.

Six brothers had been jailed, four of whom remained members. Police had investigated six more who were not convicted.

''Any institution is as sick as its secrets, and there was a culture that kept things secret,'' Brother Julian said. Though he denied there was a culture of covering up, he admitted ''in hindsight, certainly that's what it looks like''.