Brother erased from history

AUSTRALIA
The West Australian

EXCLUSIVE, Nick Butterly
Friday, February 24, 2017

The Christian Brothers have taken the extraordinary step of moving the grave of a notoriously brutal brother from the grounds of a WA school as the Catholic Church reels from revelations of past abuse.

The Catholic order has dismantled the grave of Brother Francis Paul Keaney at Bindoon Agricultural College, shifting his remains to a humble plot at Karrakatta, effectively erasing any trace of the Brother from the institution he once ruled over.

Keaney set up the Tardun farm school near Geraldton in the 1920s and was principal at Clontarf and Bindoon Boys Town from 1942 through to his death in 1954.

Child migrants from Britain and Ireland have given evidence to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse telling how Keaney presided over a fiercely brutal regime at Bindoon.

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