AUSTRALIA
The Rural
By David Ellery June 17, 2014
When the superior of serial paedophile Gregory Sutton’s Lismore monastery learnt he had taken an overnight trip with a young boy in 1986 it never occurred to him sexual abuse might be the motive.
Brother Anthony Hunt, 72, testified before the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in Canberra on Tuesday morning.
It had also failed to occur to him that a diary entry in which Sutton had written “Picked up AC. What an afternoon, she is magnificent” may also be linked to sexual abuse.
He told the commission he was not aware sexually abusing a child was a criminal act at that time.
Brother Hunt, who is now retired from teaching and living in a Marist Brothers’ community in Victoria, also denied ever being told of specific allegations made against Sutton by other teachers at St Carthage’s in Lismore.
These included Jan O’Grady, the then-assistant principal and the person who unearthed the incriminating diary entry which helped precipitate Sutton’s departure from the school.
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