AUSTRALIA
The Canberra Times
June 18, 2014
David Ellery
Reporter for The Canberra Times.
The second highest ranking member of the Marist Brothers would have needed specialist legal advice to determine if an adult touching a child on the genitals was a criminal offence in 1985.
Brother Alexis Turton, the vice-provincial of the order at the time, told Wednesday’s hearing of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, he would have also needed specialist advice to determine if it was criminal for an adult to make a child touch them on the genitals or to masturbate a child.
He did know what a paedophile was at the time and was aware sexual intercourse between an adult and a child was a criminal offence.
Brother Turton, who became the provincial of the order in 1989 and later served as its first professional standards director, said when he was made vice-provincial in 1983 he was not briefed on any sex offenders within the order.
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