Accept fact of abuse: Catholic school principal

By John Ferguson
Australian
May 18, 2015

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/in-depth/accept-fact-of-abuse-catholic-school-principal/story-fngburq5-1227358262383

The principal of one of the schools deeply impacted by Catholic Church sexual abuse has appealed to his community to pray for the abused and prepare for weeks of distress as the royal commission seeks to make sense of the diocese’s dark history.

St Patrick’s College in the Victorian regional city of Ballarat is one of a series of schools hit hard by historical child-sex abuse perpetrated by members of the Christian Brothers fraternity.

The school is one of the best-known provincial Catholic schools in Australia, its students including former archbishop of Sydney Cardinal George Pell and a series of prominent sportsmen.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse will tomorrow begin hearing three weeks of evidence into how the diocese of Ballarat severely bungled the handling of abuse, including shifting abusers from one parish to the next. It will focus on Ballarat during these hearings.

St Patrick’s headmaster John Crowley has warned students and parents at the school, about 110km west of Melbourne, about the looming publicity and is urging people to accept the role played by the school in abuse. However, he said that the abuse in question was historical.