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	Marist Brothers 'Ignored' Complaints about Sex Abuse Broken Rites June 25, 2008 http://brokenrites.alphalink.com.au/nletter/page152-kostka.html Marist College in Canberra allowed one of its Marist Brothers to continue working with boys even after the school learned that he was molesting students, a court has been told. Marist Brother John William Chute, aged 75, whose "religious" name is "Brother Kostka", pleaded guilty in the Australian Capital Territory Magistrates Court to committing indecent acts with pupils between 1985 and 1989 when they were aged 13 and 14. On 23 June 2008, Kostka was sentenced to a total of six years jail, with the first two years in full-time prison, the third year to be served by weekend detention, and the remaining three years to be fully suspended. An agreed statement of facts (submitted to the Supreme Court jointly by the prosecution and the defence) revealed that the parents of at least one victim reported Brother Kostka Chute's abuse to the Marist College headmaster in 1986, but Kostka remained at the school until the end of 1993. Kostka Chute's background According to statements made in court, John William Chute was the youngest of ten children and came from Lismore, New South Wales. In 1944, at the age of twelve, he was recruited to attend a Marist Brothers "juniorate" (a secondary boarding school for boys "aspiring" to become brothers) in Mittagong, southern New South Wales. It was there — within the Marist Brothers culture — that Chute became introduced to the practice of sexual abuse in his teens, the court was told. At the age of seventeen, he took his vows as a Marist Brother. He then adopted the name Kostka, a practice which was customary in the Marist order. (There was a "Saint Stanislaus Kostka" in the 16th century.) It was stated in court that Kostka taught at 11 other Marist Brothers schools in Australia between 1952 and 1975 before moving to Canberra's Marist College in 1976, where he stayed for 27 years. The offences At a pre-sentence hearing in the A.C.T. Supreme Court on 9 May 2008, Kostka pleaded guilty to 19 incidents of indecently touching six teenage boys between 1985 and 1989. The 19 admitted incidents represented only a fraction of the sexual encounters he had had with the six boys, according to the agreed statement of facts. [The charges were representative of Kostka molesting some victims on a daily basis.] The offences happened in various places around the school, including including: in Kostka's office; in his on-campus residence; in the theatrette where Kostka hosted movie nights; in a gardening shed; and even in a food van that sold pies at football games on weekends. How the case began Kostka was represented in court by a Sydney lawyer who frequently represents Catholic Church personnel in sex-abuse court cases. The Marist Brothers were paying for Kostka's legal costs. Originally, in the Magistrates Court on 17 January 2008, Kostka was charged with incidents of indecency extending back to 1981. However, at a second hearing on 21 February 2008, the A.C.T. Director of Public Prosecutions dropped some of the earliest charged incidents because these incidents had allegedly happened before 1985, when charges relating to sexual indecency had to be made within a year. The school ignored complaints Documents tendered in court on 21 February 2008 revealed that a teacher and one headmaster at the school were told by victims that Brother Kostka had molested them, but the school allowed him to teach for several more years. One alleged victim, whose complaint was dropped in the 21 February 2008 hearing because it related to an incident in 1981, told police in August 2007 that he had reported Kostka's assault on him to a teacher in 1986 because he was concerned that Brother Kostka was spending a lot of time with another young student. However, the teacher, John Doyle, told him the next day that "nothing was going to be done regarding his allegation and concerns". Several years later, in the early 1990s, the alleged victim went to the school and told the then-headmaster of the assault. But when he spoke to the headmaster soon after, he was told that Brother Kostka had denied assaulting him and the investigation had been passed on to Kostka's "superiors" [that is, to fellow Marist Brothers]. The alleged victim told police he had been intent in preventing Kostka from having further contact with children. He had a meeting with a senior Marist brother, Brother Alexis Turton [who was the Australian head of the Marist Brothers from 1989 to 1995]. However, the alleged victim was merely asked "what he wanted" from the Marist Brothers, and was offered counselling. Brother Turton later informed the alleged victim that Kostka had been moved to a Mittagong farmhouse in southern New South Wales for retired Marist brothers, the Hermitage, where he remained until his arrest in January 2008. The alleged victim's brother went to the farmhouse in 2002 to visit another Brother, where he discovered that Brother Kostka was running a youth drop-in centre for boys. [By 2008, Brother Alexis Turton had become the Marists' professional standards officer, with the responsibility for dealing with complaints about sexual abuse. He accompanied Kostka to court during the 2008 proceedings.] The offences According to court documents, victims told police that Brother Kostka would win their trust and confidence before developing a pattern of systemic abuse. Some boys were molested on a daily basis over more than a year. Kostka would often put his hands down the boys' pants, sometimes in classrooms with other students in the room. Other times, he would expose himself and force the boys to touch his penis, with two victims recalling vividly the expression that came over Kostka's face when he was molesting them "He would raise the outer edges of his eyebrows and his tongue would be out the side of his mouth," one boy recalled. The victims told police that Brother Kostka befriended lots of boys through a movie club he ran, in which a film would be screened at the school's theatrette on a weekly or bi-weekly basis. One victim, who was molested in 1986 in the theatrette, recalled how Kostka sat next to him and put his hand on his groin. When the boy moved away, Kostka followed, and did so about three times before finally giving up. The boy told his parents the next day and they made an appointment to see the headmaster, Brother Terrence Heinrich. Brother Terrence told them they could either go to police or the school could handle the matter "in-house". They opted for the latter. However, Kostka taught for a further seven years. [After being the headmaster in Canberra, Brother Terrence Heinrich moved to Marist College, Ashgrove, in Brisbane, where he was the headmaster in 1990-96. A Marist website says that Brother Heinrich later went to Cambodia to live in a mission that was "caring for disabled children in the suburbs of Phnom Penh".] Another victim, to whom six of the admitted 11 offences relate, said Kostka abused him between 1985 and 1987 "almost daily" and sometimes in the classroom while other students were present. In turn, Kostka "showered him with kindness". On one occasion, he threatened another victim to whom another four of the offences relate with expulsion if he told anyone. After Kostka's guilty plea on 21 February 2008, the magistrate released Kostka on bail pending sentencing proceedings in the ACT Supreme Court on a later date. While on bail, he was to live with Brother Turton in Sydney. Parents were kept in the dark After Brother Kostka's guilty plea in February 2008, Canberra Times journalist Victor Violante uncovered further information about the Brother Kostka affair, which was published in the newspaper on 1 March 2008. The Canberra Times said that, after a former student reported having been abused, Kostka was told to leave the school by his superior in 1993 but parents and students were never told why. The former Australian head of the Marist Brothers, Brother Alexis Turton, confirmed that he met an alleged victim at Canberra Airport in September 1993, prompting Brother Kostka's removal at the end of the school year. However, it is understood that neither the school nor Marist Brothers made efforts to identify any other potential victims, and they did not refer the matter to police. Brother Alexis told the Canberra Times: "Basically [the alleged victim] made a complaint about Brother Kostka. I spoke to Brother Kostka and after a discussion we decided that the best course of action would be for him to leave Canberra...Basically, after the discussion [with Kostka] I asked him to leave." Students and parents were not told at the time why Kostka had been removed from the school. Instead, the 1994 college year book suggested that Kostka had accepted an invitation to transfer to Sydney, and he was praised for his invaluable contribution to the school during his 18 years of teaching. "During the holidays last Christmas, in a belated transfer which is usual enough in religious congregations, Brother [Kostka] accepted the invitation to bring to a close his long ministry in Canberra and moved to Sydney," the entry said. "The lateness of the transfer meant we could not pay tribute to him in the 1993 Blue and Blue [year book], so here it is one year later, but no less genuine or sincere because of that." The alleged victim who met Brother Alexis at the airport, who wished to remain anonymous, told the Canberra Times that he had approached the school's headmaster more than a decade after the assault because of concerns that Kostka was allegedly grooming other children. Brother Alexis, who in 2008 is the professional standards officer for the Marist Brothers in New South Wales, Queensland and the ACT, also confirmed that Kostka was not removed from the school until three months after he met the alleged victim. He said an "assessment" concluded "no-one was in any danger" if Kostka remained at the school until the end of the term. Another alleged victim said he had reported an allegation of sexual abuse to the school in December 1993, days before Kostka was removed. On that occasion, the school again allegedly arranged for Brother Alexis to meet the boy's parents in Canberra. He assured them Kostka would never work with children again. Brother Alexis has denied any recollection of this meeting. The admissions come on the back of allegations contained in civil and criminal court documents that various headmasters and teachers knew of allegations of sexual abuse against Kostka as early as 1979, and against other brothers and teachers at the school as early as 1970, but failed to act. Pre-sentence hearing Kostka appeared in the ACT Supreme Court again on 9 May 2008 for pre-sentence submissions. At the pre-sentence hearing, Kostka pleaded guilty to 19 counts of indecently touching the six teenage boys between 1985 and 1989. This included 11 counts, relating to four boys between 1986 and 1987, to which he had pleaded guilty in February 2008. It did not include seven other charges the prosecution was forced to drop because they had allegedly happened before 1985, when a statute of limitations of one year applied in the Australian Capital Territory for such offences. The court heard that Kostka, the youngest of 10 children, had been separated from his parents in Lismore, New South Wales, when he was 11 to attend a Marist Brothers "juniorate" (a secondary boarding school for boys aspiring to become brothers) in Mittagong, southern New South Wales. It was there — within the Marist Brothers culture — that Kostka became introduced to the practice of sexual abuse, the court was told. A psychiatrist, Dr Chris Canaris, who had been treating Kostka since 2002 for what he called a "psychosexual disorder", told the court that Kostka had disclosed he had been sexually abused by an older boy while at the juniorate between the ages of 11 and 13 and also by "a member of a religious order". When Kostka appeared in court again on 5 June 2008 for further pre-sentence submissions, the Marist Brothers' lawyer (Greg Walsh) asked for a non-custodial sentence. Mr Walsh said that Kostka had sought treatment for his offending behaviour by at least 1993, but Marist Brothers did nothing for almost a decade. "The Catholic Church, and in particular this order, have a lot to answer for," Mr Walsh said. [It was not until late 2002 that Kostka was given psychological counselling for his "psychosexual disorder".] Kostka sentenced Sentencing Kostka on 23 June 2008, Justice Malcolm Gray condemned the abuse as a gross breach of trust. The judge said several character references from friends and former colleagues had to be viewed in the context of Kostka's offences. "Such testimonials are not irrelevant to my approach but must be weighed against the gross breach of trust that you perpetrated," Justice Gray said. "That trust which was reposed in you as a teacher of young children and as their custodian in place of their parents as well as that trust reposed in you as a representative of your religious order." Justice Gray sentenced Kostka to a total of six years jail, with the first two years in full-time prison. The third year would be served by weekend detention, and the remaining three years were fully suspended. Although Kostka pleaded guilty to 19 individual incidents, most of the charges were representative of years of daily abuse. Justice Gray said he had taken into consideration that the admitted charges were not isolated offences. Civil actions against the Marist Brothers Meanwhile, a larger number of Kostka's alleged victims initiated a civil action, through a Canberra solicitor, Jason Parkinson, seeking compensation from the Marist Brothers for breach of the school's duty of care. Jason Parkinson said outside the court in February 2008 that there were still unanswered questions as to what the Marist College knew about Kostka's abuse of children and why it went on for so long. Some of the ex-students in the civil action allege that Kostka was abusing them as early as the 1970s.
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