AUSTRALIA
Canberra Times
David Ellery
Reporter for The Canberra Times.
Marist College Canberra headmaster Richard Sidorko met with students on Friday to explain the background to next month’s visit to the ACT by the sexual abuse royal commission.
The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse is to conduct a public hearing on June 10 into the response of the Marist Brothers to allegations of child sexual abuse in schools in the ACT, NSW and Queensland.
A commission spokeswoman said the hearing would focus on abuses committed by Brother John Chute (aka Brother Kosta) and former Brother ZA.
Chute was jailed for two years plus another year of weekend detention in June 2008 after being found guilty of molesting six boys at the college in the 1980s.
Mr Sidorko said there had been an almost 100 per cent turnover in the college student body since that time and most of the boys had no knowledge of the events that had sparked the inquiry. Only 50 per cent of the current staff at the college were there in 2008.
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