Bega abuse victim speaks out

On the condition of anonymity, he shared his story with the BDN as news of a royal commission into child sex abuse was announced by Prime Minster Julia Gillard earlier this week.

John (not his real name) attended Marcellin College at Randwick in Sydney from 1957 to 1965 and said his schooling, particularly between 1960 and 1963, was a nightmare he has tried to forget.

“I feel very nervous about saying anything too specific…as a victim I have enormous difficulties with trust,” John said. 

“I can tell you that I was subjected to sexual and physical abuse at the hands of the Marist brothers. 

“In 1960 I was 11 and was molested by my class teacher, a Marist brother. 

“The paedophile brother was there one day and gone the next, sometime towards the end of 1960.

“What followed next was persistent physical abuse, what today would be called bashings,” John said.

“The first day with a new class teacher, after the sudden disappearance of the paedophile, I was caned some 20 times. 

“I was bewildered and confused by this treatment which was only just the start of attacks that included hair pulling, being slapped across the face, being punched and repeatedly kicked.”

John said this abuse continued on a regular basis for three years.

“As a child I could not understand what was happening and was too afraid to say anything even to my parents - maybe particularly to my parents. 

 “By the time I was 15 I was anxious and depressed and suddenly I refused to go to Mass, much to the horror of my mother - a convert to Catholicism who taught catechism at the local public school. 

“I had no-one to turn to as a child, so I said nothing. 

“My faith was gone along with any trust and I was left with a nameless anger - this anger consumed me and for many years I struggled to control and understand it.”

As an adult, John said he knows now that he was in some way blamed for what happened and “it was me who needed to be punished”.

Anxiety, depression, and anger have haunted him through until adulthood, although he said he has, to some extent, come to terms with those feelings.

“Trying to forget and just move on as some would say has not been very successful, even after the passing of 50 years,” John said. 

“Things have a way of coming back to bite you.”

John said the Marist brother who allegedly molested him was brought to justice in a very public case in Canberra, for crimes he committed in the mid-1980s. 

“What did I think and feel? Mostly guilt and sadness. 

“I had wanted to believe he had gone away and that he was not able to harm anyone else and there he was some many years later up before the court and known to be part of a paedophile ring at a Marist school. 

“Why did I feel so guilty, well because I had done nothing, said nothing and assumed the wrong thing. 

“I was furious and my anger became virtually uncontrollable, and the people around me suffered as a result.”

John said, as a victim of paedophilia, the original crime with all its overlays of hurt and betrayal has not matched the despair of the alleged cover-up. 

“To my thinking those who have covered up the crimes are more evil than the paedophiles and more deserving of punishment,” he said. 

“It is those who have covered up for paedophile brothers, teachers and priests - simply and criminally moving them on to new pastures - who have robbed victims of hope.

“Robbing a person of hope is in my opinion the greatest of all crimes and when it is children that are robbed in this way the crime is the most despicable. 

“How courageous of Senior Detective Fox to come forward to expose the ‘cover-up culture’ of the Catholic Church.

“The brother who was sent to prison only fairly recently said as part of his defence that he was an orphan taken into the brotherhood as a child where he was routinely sexually abused by the other brothers. 

“I believe this and to some extent I have forgiven him - he too was a victim. 

“But what about the years of physical abuse, the bashings, the continuing violence and the systematic cover-up? 

“These I cannot forgive, just as I cannot forget the others who have in many, many cases experienced horrors much worse than mine.

“I thank the God of my understanding that finally the cover-up is going to be exposed. 

“The ramifications of what began with Senior Detective Fox’s courage will now go on for decades and continue long after I am dead. 

“But how joyful is the knowledge that the day of reckoning is coming and that eventually we will have a society that will not tolerate the dishonesty and hypocrisy that has flourished in Catholic Church, and no doubt in other churches, for far, far too long.”