AUSTRALIA
Broken Rites
By a Broken Rites researcher (article posted 14 January 2015)
A member of the Marist Brothers in Australia (Brother Donald Gabriel Brodie NEWTON) has died, in an apparent suicide, just after New South Wales police received child-sex allegations against him from a former schoolboy. Therefore, now that he is dead, Brother Newton will not have to face any police investigation (or any court case) arising from the ex-pupil’s allegations.
* In August 2014, a man from the Hunter region (around Maitland and Newcastle, north of Sydney) made a statement to detectives in the New South Wales police, alleging that while he was a student at Maitland Marist Brothers school in the late 1970s he was sexually abused by Marist Brother Don Newton during a camping trip. These allegations were also notified to Marist Brothers headquarters in Sydney and to the office of the Maitland-Newcastle Catholic diocese. The allegations were also put to Brother Newton.
* On 5 October 2014, Brother Don Newton, 74, died suddenly in violent circumstances on a suburban railway track in Sydney.
The NSW Coroner’s Office confirmed Brother Newton’s death, but said that a formal cause of death would not be determined until investigations had been finalised.
Donald Newton had spent 56 years as a Marist Brother, working in various Marist schools in New South Wales, Queensland and Canberra.
He first met the Marist Brothers when he was a primary-school pupil. For secondary schooling, he was a boarder with the Marists at St Joseph’s College Hunteres Hill, Sydney. During his secondary schooling, he was recruited by the Marists as a future Brother. He officially became a Marist Brother at the age of 18.
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