AUSTRALIA
Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse
REPORT OF CASE STUDY NO. 11: Congregation of Christian Brothers in Western Australia response to child sexual abuse at Castledare Junior Orphanage, St Vincent’s Orphanage Clontarf, St Mary’s Agricultural School Tardun and Bindoon Farm School
Executive summary
The Christian Brothers is a Catholic religious organisation.
The organisation is divided into areas known as provinces. Until 1953 there was one Australia wide province of the Christian Brothers. This was divided into two in 1953. In 1957 there was a further ivision into four provinces.
Each province was supervised by a Provincial Council. This supervision took the form of annual visits to communities by a member of the Provincial Council. A visitor would stay with the community for a number of days and would speak to and observe the Brothers in the community as well as others who were in contact with the community. The visiting member would then write a ‘visitation report’.
One of the four provinces that existed in Australia in 1957 was the Holy Spirit Province, based in Perth, which covered Western Australia and South Australia. The Holy Spirit Province was responsible for the four children’s homes in Western Australia:
Castledare Junior Orphanage
St Vincent’s Orphanage Clontarf
St Mary’s Agricultural School Tardun
Bindoon Farm School.
The four children’s homes operated from the late 1920s and closed down between the 1960s and 1980s.
The conditions at each home were basic. The food was often of a poor quality. The boys were given clothing but no shoes or underwear. The boys were involved in building work – for example, constructing a railway – and they also did landscaping and farm work.
Finding 1: In taking children into care, the Christian Brothers were obligated to provide for them and educate them. This was not done properly in all cases. Many of the children did not have any real education and instead were put to physical labour.
Finding 2: The visitation reports focused on the community of the Brothers and the finances and religious observance of each Brother, not on the welfare of the children. We agree with Brother Anthony Shanahan, a former Provincial of the Holy Spirit Province, that, although the Western Australian Child Welfare Department conducted inspections, the department had significantly less responsibility for the children than those within the institutions who were caring for the children on a daily basis.
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