AUSTRALIA
Broken Rites
By a Broken Rites researcher (article updated 9 June 2014)
Broken Rites has researched the background of Marist Brother Gregory Sutton, who fled from Australia to the United States. He was eventually extradited back to Australia, where he was jailed for child-sex crimes committed in Catholic schools in New South Wales. Sutton also taught primary-school classes in Queensland and Canberra but the criminal charges were confined to his New South Wales crimes. In 2014, the Sutton case is being examined by Australia’s national child-abuse Royal Commission.
Broken Rites has ascertained that Brother Gregory Joseph Sutton was born in Australia on 19 March 1951. After his schooling, he became a trainee Marist Brother, living in a Marist residential centre with other Marist trainees, absorbing the Marist culture. It is believed that a second son from the same family also became a Marist Brother.
Until around that time, each new Marist Brother normally discarded his birth-name and adopted a “religious” forename (for example, Fred Smith might become “Brother Alphonsus”). From around Gregory Sutton’s time, the younger Marists started using their birth name (in Sutton’s case, he became “Brother Greg”).
The Marists in Australia were divided into two provinces. Sutton belonged to the Sydney-based province, which supplied Marist Brothers to schools in New South Wales, Queensland, the Northern Territory and the Australian Capital Territory. A Melbourne-based province covered Victoria, Tasmania, South Australia and Western Australia.
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