AUSTRALIA
Broken Rites
By a Broken Rites researcher (article updated 9 October 2014)
This Broken Rites article is the most comprehensive account avalable about the background of Christian Brother Ted Dowlan. Despite Dowlan being jailed in 1996, the Christian Brothers did not expel him. Instead, they said that they would be prepared to continue looking after Dowlan in the future. Dowlan later changed his surname to Bales and, helped by the Christian Brothers organisation, he moved into a private house of his own. In October 2014, after more of his earlier victims finally contacted the police, “Ted Bales” pleaded guilty to some more of his crimes and was remanded in custody to await a new sentencing.
It was Broken Rites that first documented the Christian Brothers policy of keeping sex-offenders if the offender wished to remain as a member. A Broken Rites researcher was present in the Melbourne County Court in July 1996, taking notes, when Brother Edward Vernon Dowlan was jailed for indecently assaulting boys in Victorian Catholic schools.
According to submissions made in court, Dowlan was openly molesting boys (in the presence of other boys) at his first two schools, so the Brothers’ Victoria-Tasmania administration moved him from his second school to a boarding school (St Patrick’s College, Ballarat), where Dowlan assaulted more boys. The parents of at least one St Patrick’s victim confronted St Patrick’s head Christian Brother about Dowlan’s offence. The Christian Brothers’ headquarters then kept transferring Dowlan to more schools, where he found yet more victims — until the police finally caught up with him in 1993.
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