AUSTRALIA
Brisbane Times
Senior members of the Christian Brothers in Australia will be in the witness box when a royal commission hearing into child sexual abuse resumes in Perth.
The hearing which started last week is examining how the Catholic religious order handled sex abuse allegations in four of its facilities in Western Australia.
Early last week survivors from four residences – Bindoon, Castledare, Clontarf and Tardun – told of extreme physical and sexual abuse by the Christian Brothers between 1947 and 1968.
The commission has also heard evidence about how civil litigation against the order in the mid-1990s was handled.
Howard Harrison, lawyer for the order, said they had a misplaced prejudice against physical and sexual abuse survivors who pursued them through the courts in the 1990s.
He said they might have had the “ill-informed” attitude that people seeking compensation through the courts were somehow less deserving.
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