AUSTRALIA
Daily Telegraph
Dark history of hidden horrors … The Christian Brothers order has finally been forced to face their secret sins
JANET FIFE-YEOMANS THE DAILY TELEGRAPH MAY 08, 2014
IT was rule 85 that stated the most obvious: Brothers must not fondle their pupils. It entered the constitution of the Christian Brothers in 1962, a time when the order was supposedly getting tougher on the pedophiles in its ranks.
It spoke volumes about the order that they still didn’t get it. Assaulting boys was not breaking a rule, or even breaking the vow of chastity — it was a crime. The order even hid behind the quaint term “fondling”.
Former Christian Brothers leader Anthony Shanahan was asked last week in the child sex abuse royal commission what he thought they had meant by “fondling” in 1962.
The royal commission has been inquiring into the handling of the shocking sexual abuse and brutal beatings in the order’s four notorious Western Australian orphanages between 1947 and 1968.
“I presume it would refer to like having a hand around the student, for example, sort of sitting with the student, sort of hand on him, sort of perhaps rubbing his back, that sort of physical contact,” Shanahan, a member of the order’s WA governing council from 1989 to 2002, said.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.