AUSTRALIA
Broken Rites
By a Broken Rites researcher (article updated 15 June 2014)
Catholic Church authorities ignored the crimes of a paedophile religious Brother – Gregory Joseph Sutton – and transferred him to other schools (giving him more victims), according to evidence given to Australia’s national child-abuse Royal Commission.
Brother Greg Sutton (born 19 March 1951) was a member of the Marist Brothers Order, which sent him to teach, from the early 1970s until the late 1980s, in Catholic schools in Queensland, New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory.
According to evidence at the Royal Commission, the Marist headquarters in Sydney (not the local school) made each of these appointments. Whenever a new child-abuse complaint surfaced about Brother Greg, the local principal was not allowed to deal with it (“because Greg is a Brother, not merely a lay teacher”). Each principal was forced to hand the matter to the Marist headquarters in Sydney, which would then send Brother Greg to another school, without warning the next principal (or the parents) about Brother Greg being danger to children.
According to evidence at the Royal Commission, the Marist leadership avoided reporting these crimes to the police. Finally, after twenty years, one family considered contacting the child-protection police. But, meanwhile the Marist headquarters gave Brother Greg a plane ticket to North America where (perhaps) he would be beyond the reach of the Australian police.
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