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Dark history of hidden horrors ...
By Janet Fife-Yeomans
IT was rule 85 that stated the most obvious: Brothers must not fondle their pupils. It entered the constitution of the Christian Brothers in 1962, a time when the order was supposedly getting tougher on the pedophiles in its ranks. It spoke volumes about the order that they still didn’t get it. Assaulting boys was not breaking a rule, or even breaking the vow of chastity — it was a crime. The order even hid behind the quaint term “fondling”. Former Christian Brothers leader Anthony Shanahan was asked last week in the child sex abuse royal commission what he thought they had meant by “fondling” in 1962. The royal commission has been inquiring into the handling of the shocking sexual abuse and brutal beatings in the order’s four notorious Western Australian orphanages between 1947 and 1968. “I presume it would refer to like having a hand around the student, for example, sort of sitting with the student, sort of hand on him, sort of perhaps rubbing his back, that sort of physical contact,” Shanahan, a member of the order’s WA governing council from 1989 to 2002, said. A secret report revealed in full in the commission last week had disclosed that by 1962 the order’s hierarchy, be it at congregational, diocesan, state, federal or international level, was well aware of dozens of reported instances of sexual assault going back decades in the order’s WA orphanages alone. The WA province in 1989 commissioned historian Dr Barry Coldrey, a Christian Brother from Melbourne, to write a history of the order in the state to preparation for their centenary in 1994. Coldrey’s book, meant for general reading, was called The Scheme and he had full access to all the order’s files in Australia and Rome. The book could not ignore the sexual and physical abuse but Coldrey had been asked to deal with the controversial subject with “balance and sensitivity”, the commission heard. Off his own bat Coldrey prepared a secret report containing full details and names of paedophile Brothers, which had been excluded from his book. He called it Reaping The Whirlwind and sent to the Superior-General of the Christian Brothers in Rome. The commission heard Coldrey was respected enough to prepare the order’s official history but even now some among the Brothers seek to discredit Reaping The Whirlwind. Brother Julian McDonald, the former leader of the NSW and Victorian province, told the commission he did not regard it as a “reliable historical source”. “I do not know why Brother Coldrey labelled it a secret report. I was not convinced it was a well-researched piece of writing. I did not believe that the conclusions made in it were based on a thorough and proper investigation, having regard to the importance and seriousness of the matters it covered,’’ McDonald said. “I was sceptical that Barry Coldrey had a basis to make statements in the piece about serious allegations such as that there existed organised and orchestrated groupings of pedophiles within the Christian Brothers in the WA institutions in the 1940s and 1950s.” McDonald was emphatic however that there was no future for the Christian Brothers until they addressed their past when he described the way the order used the thousands of child migrants shipped to WA from the UK and Malta in the last century as “child labourers to build a monument to folly and blind ambition”. Brother Philip Carmody played a significant role in Christian Brothers history, a role hidden until Coldrey’s report. The order had arrived in Australia in 1868, its charter to look after disadvantaged boys. It was also seen as an advantage to bring more Catholics into the country. On April 28, 1915, Carmody arrived in Perth from Sydney, a “wolf in sheep’s clothing”, to teach at St Vincent’s Orphanage, Clontarf in inner-city Subiaco. Clontarf’s residents were then mainly wards of the state before the child migrants were moved there in 1938. When Carmody went on annual leave on Boxing Day 1918, numerous boys came forward to report he had been sexually abusing them. The predator was dismissed immediately, sent back to Sydney and the police notified. Police arrested him in NSW and extradited him to Perth where he was jailed for nine years after pleading guilty to three counts of “indecent dealing beyond the course of nature”. The judge said it was the “most revolting” case he had seen. Carmody had become the first Christian Brother to be charged and convicted of sex abuse in Australia. As Coldrey recounts in his report, the case was also remarkable for the way it was handled — perfectly. Correspondence shows Perth’s Archbishop Patrick Clune was worried the opposition would call for a royal commission into the affair. After Carmody was dismissed, the Superior-General of the order was told of “the big scandal”, child welfare officers were called in and the entire staff of the orphanage changed, even though none of the others had been involved in the abuse. It was a textbook handling of a shocking and distressing case. It would be another 74 years before a second Christian Brother faced a court. In 1994 Brother Dick from Castledare Orphanage was convicted of 10 counts of unlawfully and indecently dealing with five boys under the age of 14 and sentenced to three and half years’ jail. In about 2000, Brother William Marchant was convicted of sexually abusing boys in the 1970s or 1980s at Tardun Farm School and did not receive a custodial sentence. Two other Brothers were charged but for medical reasons never went to trial. The commission heard that there had been rules in place since 1947 including that the Brothers “shall not touch their pupils through playfulness or flapity and they shall never touch them on the face”. Flapity means excitement or extreme joy. Despite the rules, counsel assisting the commission, Gail Furness SC, read through a sad chronology of reported abuse uncovered by Coldrey. Four cases in 1921, two in 1926 and so on through seven in 1953, which Coldrey called a “peak year for second-vow problems”. The second vow being chastity. The commission heard it was decades before the Christian Brothers recognised sexual abuse as a crime and not a moral failing. A class action in the mid-1990s — which was beaten by the Christian Brothers on technical issues — forced the order to face its past. A compensation fund was set up and recruits to the order dried up in Australia. Celibacy and a religious life was no longer attractive. The Brothers turned their sights to the fresh recruiting grounds of Africa, India and Ghana, where young men are being trained to come to Australia as clergy. Shanahan, who has been training new Brothers in Ghana for 11 years, said that brought its own issues. He said the order had to ensure that the men had to be thoroughly assessed to make sure they could fit into the Australian culture. It was important they be mature, emotionally balanced and well-integrated into society, unlike some Christian Brothers in the past. To make sure nothing like this happens again. Commissioner Justice Peter McClellan asked Shanahan: “Do I understand that some of those clergy may be coming, or other religious may be coming, from institutions where the contemporary thinking that you speak of may not have been part of their training?” Shanahan: “That’s possible.” McClellan: That suggests a need for us to look at whether … we should be asking the Church to address those issues …” Shanahan: “Mmmm.” McClellan: “…before it brings priests or other religious to work in Australia, is that right?” Shanahan: “I believe so.” The royal commission has wound up its hearing into the WA institutions.
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