AUSTRALIA
Broken Rites
By a Broken Rites researcher (article updated 25 August 2015)
Christian Brother Christopher Rafferty, now aged 63, from Sydney, appeared in court on 19 August 2015, charged with child-sex offences allegedly committed in the 1980s while he was working at St Patrick’s College in Goulburn, in south-western New South Wales. The court case will resume on a future date in what could be a multi-step process. In recent years, until his arrest, Brother Rafferty has been working (and residing) at a Catholic boys’ school (St Pius X College) in Chatswood, on Sydney’s North Shore. Before joining St Pius X College, Br Rafferty had been deputy headmaster of St Mary’s Cathedral College in central Sydney.
Police arrested Rafferty at 8.05 am on 4 March 2015. The arrest was conducted not at the Christian Brothers’ Chatswood residence but at a different address — a residential property in another suburb (Victoria Road, Ryde). Therefore, in court documents, Rafferty is listed as living at the Ryde address, not the Chatswood one.
According to court documents, the offences allegedly were committed between 1984 and 1987 upon one boy who was a student at St Patrick’s College, Goulburn. The earliest charge relates to when the boy was aged 13. At the time of the alleged assaults, the accused man (then aged in his thirties) was allegedly a Christian Brother at the Goulburn school.
* two counts of indecent assault;
* two counts of sexual assault;
* three counts of homosexual intercourse with a pupil; and
* one count of committing an act of indecency.
As from 15 April 2015, the Rafferty matter in the hands of magistrates at the Goulburn Local Court. The Rafferty matter came up for a administrative mention in this court on 19 August 2015, and the magistrate adjourned the matter to a future date, when the court will consider the arrangements for a committal hearing.
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