AUSTRALIA
The Canberra Times
Daniel Burdon
As the light faded from the Canberra sky, the families and friends of victims of past child sexual abuse at Marist College gathered for a long-awaited healing ceremony on Thursday night.
At once an acknowledgement and apology for the abuse suffered by college students during the late 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s, and the failures to act at the time, the ceremony also marked a College plea for forgiveness and a public pledge that such events would “never happen again”.
The ceremony also saw a plaque unveiled in remembrance of the students abused and committing the school to the “healing process”, with a reading from psalm 119:105: “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light for my path”.
It followed calls from survivors of abuse at the college for a permanent memorial, including one as early as 2012 by former student Nicholas Quaine, as well as the findings of the royal commission that the Marist Brothers Catholic order failed to intervene and remove offending brothers John Chute and Gregory Joseph Sutton.
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