AUSTRALIA
Sky News

The former principal of a Marist boarding school has denied he lied to an abuse victim by telling him he did not know a brother was abusing boys.

Br Gerald Burns is in the witness stand for the second day of a royal commission hearing into the Catholic Church’s internal process for dealing with abuse complaints.

He was principal at St Augustine’s College, Cairns, in the 1980s when a man named DK was abused by three brothers, one of whom, Ross Murrin, was later jailed for molesting children in Sydney.

Br Burns has denied to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse that he said at a Towards Healing mediation hearing with DK in 2010 that he knew nothing of Murrin’s abuse of other boys in 1981.