AUSTRALIA
Broken Rites
By a Broken Rites researcher (article updated 7 February 2015)
This Broken Rites article is the most comprehensive account available about the background of Australia’s notorious paedophile Christian Brother Ted Dowlan. Despite Dowlan being jailed in 1996, the Christian Brothers did not expel him from their Order. Instead, they said that they would continue looking after him. Dowlan later changed his surname to Bales and, helped by the Christian Brothers organisation, he moved into a private residence 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 his next sentencing procedure, which is scheduled for 27 February 2015.
It was Broken Rites that first documented the Christian Brothers policy of continuing to support any criminal member in their ranks, even after a court conviction. A senior Christian Brothers official explained this policy in the Melbourne County Court in July 1996, when Brother Edward Vernon Dowlan faced charges for indecently assaulting boys in Victorian Catholic schools. A Broken Rites researcher was present in court, day after day, taking notes during the 1996 proceedings. The following article is based on those notes.
According to submissions made in court in 1996, Dowlan was openly molesting boys (in the presence of other boys) at his first two schools (in 1971-72), and therefore the Christian Brothers’ Victoria-Tasmania administration moved him to another school, a boarding school (St Patrick’s College, Ballarat) in 1973, enabling Dowlan to commit more crimes on more boys, including boarders. 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 (and more victims) — until the police finally caught up with him in 1993.
During final pre-sentence submissions in court by the defence in 1996, a senior member of the Christian Brothers leadership (Brother Peter William Dowling, not to be confused with the prisoner Edward Dowlan) gave “character” evidence for Edward Dowlan. Brother Dowling, who was the Victoria-Tasmania deputy leader of the Christian Brothers in 1996, was a pupil at Melbourne’s Parade College in the 1960s, one year ahead of fellow-pupil Ted Dowlan. Peter Dowling told the court that, if there were sex-abuse complaints about Brother Ted Dowlan in the 1970s, the Christian Brothers leadership at that time would certainly have known it. But, he said, the Brothers would have regarded the sex abuse as a “moral” problem (rather than a criminal offence). He said the offender would merely have to “promise not to do it again”.
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