Rachel Baxendale

The Australian
February 23, 2016

http://tinyurl.com/zvopyrn

The Christian Brothers at St Patrick’s College in Ballarat shut down the Student Representative Council and accused its members of “spreading scurrilous lies” when they tried to report sexual abuse, the royal commission has heard.

Timothy Barlow, a student and SRC member in the mid 1970s, gave evidence yesterday of being physically assaulted by Christian Brothers, who told him “you’ll ­regret this, you f. king lying prick’’ when he tried to alert principal Brother Paul Nangle to the abuse.

The commission’s third hearing in the western Victorian city opened yesterday, focusing on the response of the Christian Brothers Catholic order in Victoria to allegations of child sexual abuse made in relation to six brothers.

They were Stephen Farrell, ­Edward Dowlan, Gerald Leo Fitzgerald, and three brothers referred to by the pseudonyms CCK, BWX and CCJ.

All six Christian Brothers being investigated have been convicted of child sex offences, and all taught at institutions in the Ballarat diocese, including St Alipius Boys School in Ballarat East, St Patrick’s Primary School, St Patrick’s College and St Paul’s Technical School in Ballarat, and St Joseph’s Primary School and St Joseph’s Christian Brothers College in Warrnambool.

In her opening, counsel assisting the royal commission Gail ­Furness SC noted that, ­between January 1980 and February 2015, 853 people, 98 per cent of them male, and 75 per cent of them under 13 at the time of the ­alleged offence, made a claim or substantiated complaint of child sexual abuse against one or more Christian Brothers.

Across Australia, 281 brothers have had claims or substantiated complaints made against them. The reported amount of compensation paid by the brothers in relation to the claims has reached $37.3 million, with an average payment of $64,000. Tasmanian and Victorian cases account for 45 per cent of the complaints.

Mr Barlow spoke of a “survival of the fittest” environment at St Patrick’s College when he ­arrived as a Form Three boarder in 1973. “The kids referred to the boys who were being abused as the brothers’ bum buddies,” he said.

Mr Barlow spoke of raising the issue of the abuse at an SRC meeting after a younger student told him he wanted Brother Dowlan to stop molesting him and his brother. “I had observed Brother Dowlan doing this myself,” he said.

“He used to walk around the handball courts with three or four junior students around him. He would have his hands down the back of one of the boy’s pants as they walked around. This may not have been a daily occurrence, but it was frequent enough for it to be noticed by students.”

Mr Barlow said that, as a Form Three SRC representative, he had moved at the next meeting that the SRC request Brother Nangle speak to Brother Dowlan. “I don’t recall the exact words I used, but I believe that I would have said something quite basic like, ‘We should ask Brother Nangle to tell Brother Dowlan to stop putting his hands down kids’ pants’,” Mr Barlow said.

He said he had been studying the night after the SRC meeting when he was struck on the back of the head by a dorm master called Brother Barr, who was a close friend of Brother Dowlan. “They then hauled me to the other end of the corridor where I was subjected to physical and ­verbal assault by both men,” Mr Barlow said.

“I was a slight and average sized 15 year old at the time. As they were beating me, they said things like: ‘You’ll regret this, you f. king lying prick’ and ‘Who the hell do you think you are, you little smart-arse’.’’

Mr Dowlan was sentenced last year to a maximum of six years’ jail, increased to eight on appeal, after he pleaded guilty to 33 charges relating to 20 victims.