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Day 4: Royal commission told Christian Brothers tried to avoid liability over alleged abuse
A LAWYER who represented the Christian Brothers against survivors of extreme abuse in WA has agreed it’s inconceivable the order’s leaders did not know sexual abuse and gratuitous violence was going on.
On Thursday, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual abuse heard from two lawyers who sat on opposite sides of litigation brought in the mid-1990s by abuse survivors from four Christian Brothers institutions in WA.
Under questioning from commission chairman Peter McClellan, Carroll & O’Dea partner Howard Harrison, who was a lawyer for the Christian Brothers in the 1990s, acknowledged the leaders of the order must have known about the violence at its institutions. “It is inconceivable they didn’t know that the violence went beyond punishment, was gratuitous in many cases. It is inconceivable they didn’t know that, isn’t it?” Justice McClellan asked.
“Well, yes, your honour,” Mr Harrison replied.
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