AUSTRALIA
The Age
November 25, 2012
Richard Baker and Nick McKenzie
ONE of at least 12 students who allege they were sexually abused by a priest at a New South Wales Catholic school has been awarded compensation by the state government.
Fairfax Media can reveal that Cameron Searl, a former student of Chevalier College in Bowral, was awarded $20,000 by the Victims Compensation Tribunal in December 2008 after it determined he had been sexually abused between 1984 and 1985 by a priest who taught music at the school.
”Having carefully considered all of the material on this file, I am satisfied on a ‘balance of probabilities’ that the incidents of sexual abuse occurred in the course of the commission of an offence and involved violent conduct on the applicant,” the Victims Compensation Tribunal concluded.
The head of Missionaries of Sacred Heart, Father John Mulrooney, last week confirmed that 12 students had told the school’s principal or the church that they had been sexually abused by Father Tony Caruana during the 1980s.
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