AUSTRALIA
Macedon Ranges Weekly
RYAN OSLAND
02 Sep, 2012
It jarred to read again that a judge had described my old high school in the 1970s as a ”brutal and frightening place, with an atmosphere of violence”.
This was St Pius X College, then a Catholic boys school, in the Newcastle suburb of Adamstown. I had attended St Pius X from 1963 until my Higher School Certificate year, 1968, and in the 1970s my late mother was secretary to successive principals and I knew members of staff. Some were frequent visitors to my mother’s home.
In 2010, the District Court judge Helen Syme described the living hell of abuse and sadism faced by St Pius X students. On Thursday last week the former St Pius X principal, Father Tom Brennan, 74, became the first Australian Catholic priest to be charged with concealing the alleged sex crimes of another priest.
He has also been charged with assaulting two boys by caning them when they complained of being allegedly sexually assaulted by teacher John Sidney Denham.
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