AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald
Rachel Browne
The sex crimes of Brother Paschal Bartlett were as numerous as they were horrific.
A member of the Franciscan order, he supervised altar boys for almost 50 years in various locations around Australia and New Zealand, exploiting his position of authority to sexually abuse them.
“I genuinely believe there would be thousands of victims out there,” said one former altar boy, who was abused by the friar in Sydney in the 1960s and ’70s. “He had access to altar boys for almost 50 years and it would appear he was never challenged.”
Brother Paschal joined the Order of the Friars Minor in the 1920s, moving through parishes in Victoria, Tasmania, New Zealand and Sydney, where he was at the Waverley parish on and off from the 1940s to the 1990s.
He had two lengthy periods of sick leave in the 1960s before returning to Waverley’s Mary Immaculate Church where students from nearby Waverley College were encouraged to serve as altar boys.
It was there the former altar boy, who has requested anonymity, first encountered the man he describes as “without moral scruples”.
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