AUSTRALIA
Sky News

The Marist Brothers did not want to make a public apology to a victim of sex abuse because it would affect people at the Queensland school where the abuser had worked, a national inquiry into child sex abuse has heard.

Brother Michael Hill, the former head of the Marist Brothers in NSW, Queensland and the ACT, denied at the inquiry on Tuesday he tried to protect the order over the needs of a man whose life had been shattered by the abuse.

He apologised for his handling of the complaint against Brother Raymond Foster, who molested a 13-year-old boy in the 1970s.

In a letter to the principal of the North Queensland school in late 2000 he said the complainant, identified as DG, was seeking a public apology.