Perth hearing told of years of abuse

Daily Mail (UK)
June 30, 2014

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/aap/article-2674523/Perth-hearing-told-years-abuse.html

The two-week Perth inquiry investigated the responses of the Christian Brothers and West Australian state authorities to abuse allegations at Christian Brothers-run schools and orphanages in Bindoon, Castledare, Clontarf and Tardun.

Among the most shocking evidence presented at the hearings, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse was told boys were subjected to torture, rape and beatings by Christian Brothers at the four childcare institutions between 1947 and 1968.

And they were abused with impunity, the commission was told.

Survivors of abuse were hamstrung at every turn, with children as young as ten, many of whom were child migrants, being beaten by Christian Brother superiors if they told of the abuse.

The survivors told of how statute of limitation laws in WA, as well as double jeopardy laws, prevented men from coming forward to identify a Christian Brother later convicted of abusing five boys in his care.

It was also established during the hearings that the order had records of abuse dating back to 1922.

The Catholic Education order has paid more than $21 million in compensation claims across the country, at an average of $50,000 each.

The commission heard that between January 1980 and June 2013 the order received 775 complaints of sexual, physical or psychological abuse, from more than 500 people.

The Christian Brothers announced at the end of the hearings they would provide for life-long professional psychological counselling for people who survived sexual and physical abuse in their care.

WITNESS

Vietnam veteran Gordon Grant is still haunted by his treatment at the hands of Christian Brothers at the Perth based St Joseph's Agricultural trade school, Bindoon, in the 1950s.

Now in his early 80s, he still remembers meeting the school principal Brother Francis Keaney when he was 13.

"He was a huge man, and I said, `I don't know yet, brother', and without warning, he slammed his clenched fist into my face and I was knocked backwards along the cement floor," Mr Grant told the inquiry May.

Over two weeks the commission heard from 10 other men with similar stories to Mr Grant.

All of them were residents at schools run by the Christian Brothers in Bindoon, Clontarf, Castledare and Tardun between 1947 and 1968.