AUSTRALIA
Broken Rites
By a Broken Rites researcher (article updated 21 June 2015)
Broken Rites has helped to obtain justice for schoolboys who were sexually assaulted by Marist Brother Francis William Cable (also known as “Brother Romuald”) in Catholic schools around Sydney and the Newcastle region. During Brother Romuald’s life of crime, his Marist colleagues and superiors looked the other way, protecting him from the police and giving him access to more victims. Eventually, some of his victims (acting separately) began to contact Broken Rites and/or the New South Wales Police. Detectives from Newcastle then found more victims. On 18 June 2015 “Romuald” Cable, aged 83, was sentenced to at least eight years jail regarding 19 victims. These 19 were not Brother Romuald’s only victims — these are merely those who have spoken to the detectives. Other victims have remained silent.
The crimes against these 19 victims (usually including several assaults on each victim) were committed between 1960 and 1974. Any victims of Cable before 1960, or after 1974, have not contacted the police. When sentencing Cable, the judge calculated a jail sentence based on the total number (and seriousness) of assaults committed on these 19 victims.
Francis William Cable was born on 3 May 1932. As a child, he attended a Marist Brothers school, where he was introduced to the ways of the Marist Brothers. Eventually he was selected to undergo training to become a Marist Brother. He was a member of the Marist Brothers from 1952 to 1978.
One of his first roles (in the late 1950s) was on the staff of a Marist-operated boys’ orphanage — St Vincent’s Boys Home at Westmead in western Sydney. Broken Rites has been aware for some time that Brother Romuald Cable was targeting boys at St Vincent’s Boys Home but, fortunately for Cable, no former St Vincent’s boys have contacted the police during this current investigation.
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