AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald
Marist Brother Kostka Chute allowed to teach for years after first sexual assault complaints, royal commission told
June 19, 2014
David Ellery
Reporter for The Canberra Times.
The Marist Brothers did not remove serial child molester Kostka Chute from teaching in Canberra until the ACT’s youth advocate, Brian McLeod, was alerted in December 1993.
This was despite a history of complaints about the now disgraced former Marist Brother at the Canberra college dating back to at least 1986, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has heard.
Chute first offended in 1959 and was given a canonical warning about admissions of repeated child sex abuse offences in 1968.
Former Canberra Marist Brothers student, Damian De Marco, first complained of abuse by Chute in 1986 when he was in Year 12. This was ignored, the commission heard.
He complained again in September 1993 after learning Chute, who had assaulted him in 1981, was still teaching at the school.
Then-headmaster, Brother Christopher Wade, referred the complaint to the head of the order, Brother Alexis Turton, who returned to the stand to give evidence at Thursday’s hearing.
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