Mp Stephen Jones Says Sexual Predators Moved Freely at Edmund Rice College in the 1980s

By Angela Thompson
Sydney Morning Herald
June 16, 2016

http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/mp-stephen-jones-says-sexual-predators-moved-freely-at-edmund-rice-college-in-the-1980s-20160616-gpl1s6.html

Stephen Jones was a student at Edmund Rice College in Wollongong in the early 1980s. Photo: Steven Siewert

Boys at Wollongong's Edmund Rice College in the 1980s knew sexual predators moved freely among them, and would share advice about who to avoid being alone with, Throsby MP Stephen Jones — a former school captain — has revealed.

Following another teacher's admission of guilt over historic child sex crimes at the West Wollongong all-boys college, Mr Jones said the school had felt like a "dumping ground" for paedophiles whose crimes were overlooked by those who could have ended the abuse.

"There was a whole bunch of them [paedophiles] at the time I was there," said Mr Jones, who graduated from the school in 1983.

Stephen Jones was a student at Edmund Rice College in the early 1980s. Photo: Steven Siewert

"Boys would [avoid them] in all sorts of ways. We would just talk amongst ourselves about it — 'don't get caught with this person or that person'."

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Brother John Vincent Roberts was allowed to teach at the school despite at least one prior complaint of abuse at another NSW Christian Brothers School.

In Wollongong Local Court on Wednesday, Roberts, 73, admitted to 11 charges relating to the sexual abuse of a young male student at Edmund Rice in the late 1980s.

Mr Jones said classmates of his felt betrayed, decades later, to learn that the Christian Brothers hierarchy had knowingly transferred predators to the school.

"It certainly seemed to us, the guys who were there at the time, that Wollongong was a dumping ground for brothers who'd got in trouble in other places and they thought they'd move them down here where nobody would complain, where their past wouldn't catch up with them," he said.

"They changed schools but not their behaviour."

Mr Jones attended Edmund Rice when Brother Michael Evans was school principal and Father Peter Comensoli was parish priest.

Evans committed suicide in 1994 before detectives were to interview him about child abuse allegations. Comensoli has served jail time for abusing boys and last month admitted to molesting three boys in the 1960s.

Mr Jones said his father learnt of the abuse that had occurred at the school in the early 1990s, during the Wood Royal Commission.

"It's one of the saddest conversations I'd ever had with my father," he said.

"He felt like he'd let us down, and that it was so outside of his world view of what could have been possible that he probably wouldn't have believed us.

"I felt incredibly sad for him, for both my parents. They thought they were doing the right thing by their kids."

With other old boys, Mr Jones has received a letter from Edmund Rice College since Roberts' plea. He is convinced the school has "changed enormously" since its darkest days.

"The letter was unequivocal about condemning the behaviour and putting the interests of the kids first," he said.

"It is a great shame that the leaders of the school 30 years ago didn't have the same approach."

Roberts returns to court on August 11 for sentencing.