AUSTRALIA
ABC News
[with video]
Royal commission into child sexual abuse: Former Marist Brothers provincial denies shipping paedophile overseas to avoid police investigation
By Ewan Gilbert
Damning evidence suggesting the Catholic Church was complicit in allowing a serial paedophile to flee the country and avoid arrest has been shown to the royal commission in Canberra.
Brother Gregory Sutton was extradited from the United States in 1996 to face 67 counts of child sexual abuse.
But today the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse heard Brother Sutton was “urgently” sent to Canada six years earlier for “therapy”.
Under cross-examination, the head of the Catholic Marist Brothers at the time, Brother Alexis Turton, was repeatedly forced to deny that the decision was made to thwart a police investigation and avoid sinking the church into scandal.
“I will ask you again, did you understand in or about 13 August 1989 that there was a police investigation into Brother Gregory Sutton?” counsel assisting Simeon Beckett asked.
“I don’t recall that, no,” Brother Turton replied.
But Brother Turton was shown a number of documents and reports suggesting that he was aware of trouble with Brother Sutton before the decision was made to send him overseas.
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