CHRISTIAN Brothers Apologise for Vic Abuse

9 News
October 10, 2014

http://www.9news.com.au/national/2014/10/10/15/32/christian-brothers-apologise-for-vic-abuse

The Christian Brothers have expressed deep and enduring regret for the sex crimes of one of their former Victorian brothers.

Ted Bales, 64, this week pleaded guilty to 55 counts of indecent assault spanning 16 years during the 1970s and 1980s.

The Christian Brothers Oceania apologised and expressed sorrow that children had been abused in its care.

"That children were abused and continue to bear the scars of those traumatic events is a matter of deep and enduring regret," The Christian Brothers said in a statement on Friday.

Bales, now a defrocked layman living in Thomastown, was formerly known as Edward Vernon Dowlan.

He spent five years in prison in the 1990s after being convicted of other historical sex offences.

He then changed his identity to avoid publicity because his name came up whenever the media reported on crimes involving the Christian Brothers, a court has heard.

The name Dowlan has frequently appeared alongside some of Australia's most notorious clergy pedophiles, including Robert Charles Best and Gerald Francis Ridsdale.

The Christian Brothers urged anybody who had been harmed to contact their professional standards office.