AUSTRALIA
Broken Rites

By a Broken Rites researcher (article updated 21 May 2015)

A Christian Brother, Peter John Toomey, had a habit of indecently assaulting students at a Melbourne Catholic secondary school in the presence of other students, a court has been told. Toomey also taught in other schools including in Ballarat, in regional Victoria. In May 2015, Brother Toomey was mentioned by a Ballarat victim at a public hearing of Australia’s national child-abuse Royal Commission 2015.

Peter Toomey joined the Victoria-Tasmania province of the Christian Brothers order (the St Patrick’s province) about 1967, when he was aged 18. In 1972, aged 23, he was teaching a variety of subjects in Years 7 and 8 at Trinity Regional College in Brunswick, in Melbourne’s inner north.

In 1998, an ex-student of this school (“Boris”, born in 1960) was having a personal crisis at the age of 38. In discussions with…