NEW TOWN (AUSTRALIA)
Australian Broadcasting Corporation - ABC [Sydney, Australia]
April 5, 2025
By Loretta Lohberger
In short:
Peter Cotton was sexually abused by Christian Brother teacher Daniel McMahon at Aquinas College in Perth in the 1960s.
When he found out many years later McMahon had moved to Tasmania to become a priest, he made a complaint to the Archdiocese of Hobart.
What’s next?
Mr Cotton is worried the Tasmanian church has not learnt from the situation and warns, “if they’re not prepared to look into it seriously and make some admissions, they run the risk of this all happening again”.
Peter Cotton was in his first weeks at a Catholic boarding school in Perth in the 1960s when he was sexually abused by his class teacher.
That teacher was then-Christian Brother Daniel McMahon.
WARNING: This story deals with trauma and child sexual abuse.
Later, in 2002, Mr Cotton found out McMahon had moved to Tasmania in the 1990s to become a priest, and he was compelled to act.
Mr Cotton made a complaint about McMahon to the Archdiocese of Hobart, hoping he would be removed as a priest.
“I had a 12-year-old son at the time and that’s what triggered me — action needed to be taken,” he said.
“I’d sat on this McMahon information for decades at that stage, and I had good reason to act … and pursue a complaint to its end, which I hoped would be McMahon being defrocked.”
But McMahon remained a priest until the day he died in 2012.
Letters reveal archdiocese discussing McMahon
A former journalist, Mr Cotton used his research and interviewing skills to write a manuscript about his own experiences and those of other victim-survivors who he contacted.
He also interviewed church figures and McMahon himself.
For Mr Cotton, it was never about getting a book published, but about putting all the information together so it could be shared with others.
He said letters he acquired indicated “how complicit the Archdiocese of Hobart was in maintaining McMahon as a priest within their archdiocese”.
“The Archdiocese of Hobart claimed [to me that McMahon] was put out to pasture 18 months after my complaint.
“Letters I acquired as part of the writing of the book indicated that was anything but the truth,”
Mr Cotton said.
In a letter from then-Christian Brothers province leader Kevin Ryan to Archbishop Adrian Doyle dated November 6, 2006, Brother Ryan wrote:
“We believe you would be making a very wise decision if you fully withdraw Fr Daniel [McMahon] from ministry.”
Brother Ryan then offered to meet with McMahon, Archbishop Doyle and the then-vicar-general to discuss the allegations.
Ahead of the December 19, 2006 meeting, Archbishop Doyle wrote to Brother Ryan that the meeting “would be very valuable”.
“It would also assist in conveying the decision that his public priestly ministry come to an end”.
At some point after Mr Cotton’s complaint was received, McMahon was removed from the role of parish priest — someone who is responsible for a particular location and celebrates mass in that parish regularly.
But he was never stopped from practising as a priest altogether.
He became a relief priest, filling in when other priests were on holidays or ill.
“That continued pretty much through the years until his death in 2012. Parishioners were not informed as to his history,” Mr Cotton said.
“To let him into parishes in they way they did was mind-bogglingly bad and stupid practice.”
Allegations from the 1950-1990s
McMahon was moved around various Christian Brothers schools in Western Australia and South Australia before he returned to his home state of Tasmania to become a priest.
Lawyer Judy Courtin’s firm represents 10 McMahon victim-survivors.
“McMahon was raping and sexually assaulting children over a period of 35 to 40 years. He started in Tasmania in the 50s, when he was still training to be a Christian Brother,”
Dr Courtin said.
“He was still raping and sexually assaulting children in the 90s when he returned to Tasmania.”
She said he was moved every one to two years while he was a Christian Brother.
Dr Courtin estimated there could be 200 or more victims of McMahon, “because we know that only about 5 per cent of boys who are sexually assaulted by Catholic clergy will ever report to the police”.
‘Abuse allowed to continue’
A West Australian parliamentary committee heard evidence about McMahon as part of its inquiry into the options available to survivors of institutional child sexual abuse in WA who are seeking justice.
In its report from 2023, the Community Development and Justice Standing Committee said it understood McMahon “abused children at every school he attended”.
“Despite knowledge of the abuse by at least the 1990s, Father McMahon’s abuse was allowed to continue,”
the report said.
The committee also said it received evidence that “the Archdiocese [of Hobart] allowed Father McMahon to continue as an active priest until his death in 2012”.
It said “credible evidence” from Mr Cotton included that 24 men had come forward alleging assault by McMahon, “including one from Tasmania when he was a priest”.
The committee also received evidence that the Christian Brothers had been paying compensation to victims of McMahon “since at least the early 2000s”.
The Trustees of the Christian Brothers made a compensation payment to Mr Cotton in 2019 for the abuse he experienced while a student at Aquinas College.
‘They run the risk of this all happening again’
Mr Cotton said while his contact with the Archdiocese of Hobart through his research had been “cordial and professional” he was concerned the archdiocese “don’t seem to have learnt from the experience of McMahon”.
“The Archdiocese of Hobart should own up to this situation. If they’re not prepared to look into it seriously and make some admissions, they run the risk of this all happening again,”
he said.
“There should be a judicial inquiry looking into the way they dealt with my complaint and the complaints that followed, and what they did about McMahon, and how they used him, continued to use him as a [relief] priest despite these credible claims against him,” he said.
Mr Cotton said he would also like to see the archdiocese publish a notice about McMahon that would invite others to come forward to make a complaint or seek support.
No comment from archbishops
The ABC asked the Archdiocese of Hobart for interviews with both Archbishop Doyle and the current Archbishop of Hobart, Julian Porteous, and gave an outline of what the interviews would cover.
A spokesperson declined both interviews, saying:
“For reasons of confidentiality the Archdiocese of Hobart does not publicly comment on individual matters.”
The ABC then went back to the archdiocese with specific questions for both archbishops, which included how the McMahon matter was handled at the time and what, if anything, had been learnt from it.
Neither archbishop responded to any of the questions.
The director of the Australian Centre for Child Protection at the University of South Australia, Professor Leah Bromfield, said it was “so important” that institutions acknowledge and be transparent about their past mistakes.
“For victim-survivors that’s about being seen, that’s about an organisation demonstrating that they actually learned and that children in the future will be safer,”
Dr Bromfield said.
Dr Bromfield said institutions needed to do more than say sorry, they needed to “act sorry”.
“And part of acting sorry when it comes to child sexual abuse is acknowledging your past, is being transparent,” she said.
The WA parliamentary inquiry also wrote of the importance of transparency:
“Institutions that maintain an unholy wall of silence can only be doing so as a strategy to limit their financial liability rather than providing just outcomes for victim/survivors. Transparency would be a game-changer,” its report said.