AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald
Royal Commission: Marist Brothers allowed child molester to teach at St Joseph’s College Hunters Hill
December 17, 2013
Catherine Armitage
Senior Writer
The Marist Brothers allowed child molester Brother Raymond Foster to continue teaching at the prestigious boys’ boarding school St Joseph’s College, Hunters Hill on the strength of an assurance that he wouldn’t do it again.
Brother Alexis Turton, whose job in 1994 was to deal with such complaints, said Foster was not withdrawn from teaching boys as young as 12 despite being the subject of three complaints in as many years because “I assume I would have got an assurance from him that what was referred to 40 years ago was not an issue now”.
There’d been an anonymous complaint in 1991, a telephone call in 1993 and, in May 1994, a further letter identifying Brother Foster as molesting boys at St Augustine’s College in Cairns as far back as
Wasn’t that astonishing, Brother Turton was asked by Angus Stewart, counsel assisting the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. He agreed that “looking back now”, his response to the allegations was “absolutely” unacceptable. He said the Marist Brothers had naively seen child sexual abuse as “pretty much a moral problem that was essentially a matter of following up with someone…that [they] recognise it is wrong and it won’t happen again”.
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