AUSTRALIA
Broken Rites
By a Broken Rites researcher (article updated 22 January 2014)
This Broken Rites article is the most comprehensive account available about how the Marist Brothers allowed the sex-abuse criminal Brother Ross Francis Murrin to remain in their Order, thus giving him access to more child victims. In 2014, Australia’s national Royal Commission on Child Sexual Abuse is investigating this pattern of cover-up. See our 2014 update under the final sub-heading: “How the church treated this victim, Mr DK”.
Brother Ross Murrin was jailed in 2008 and 2010 for child-sex crimes, committed during his teaching career in Australian Catholic schools. There is evidence that his Marist superiors were aware many years ago about his criminal behaviour but they negligently allowed him to continue teaching, until some of Murrin’s victims finally spoke to the police in 2007. In 2014,
Murrin worked in eleven Catholic schools in New South Wales and Queensland. Here are three examples:
* Murrin’s first school was the Marist Brothers boys’ primary school in DACEYVILLE (in Sydney’s east) in 1974. On 10 March 2008, Murrin was jailed after pleading guilty to 17 charges of indecently assaulting eight boys in Year 5 and Year 6 at this school.
* Murrin’s third school was St Augustine’s College in CAIRNS, Queensland, in 1979-81. Queensland police have taken sworn statements from former Cairns pupils, alleged that they were molested by Murrin. There is evidence that the school administration knew what Murrin was doing. Yet he was kept in the Marist order and was transferred to more schools.
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