AUSTRALIA
The Australian
JULY 02, 2014
Dan Box
Crime Reporter
Sydney
A PEDOPHILE Catholic brother has told a royal commission the leader of his order alerted him to a police investigation, sent him overseas four days later and subsequently told him to “stay there and live your life”.
Gregory Sutton, a former Marist Brother ultimately convicted of 67 sexual offences against 15 children, is the first serial offender to publicly give evidence to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.
Sutton, released from prison in 2008, told the commission the then-head of the Marist Brothers, Alexis Turton, met him in 1989 and told him there was a police investigation into his activities at a western Sydney school.
Brother Turton directed Sutton to leave the country four days later, travelling first to Chicago and then to Canada for “assessment” at an institute used by the Catholic Church, Sutton told the commission.
“I thought it sounded extremely sudden to me. I didn’t question the timing of it,” he said.
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