AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald
July 15, 2019
By Farrah Tomazin and Chris Vedelago
The viability of the Christian Brothers is in doubt as the religious order is forced to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to settle an avalanche of compensation claims stemming from decades of child abuse.
The Age can reveal the Christian Brothers’ Australian wing has already spent more than $213 million on victims’ payouts and legal expenses in the past six years, with the order expecting to outlay at least another $134 million in the future.
But as survivors continue to seek compensation under the National Redress Scheme, the Catholic order is relying on massive injections of cash from its regional headquarters to pay out people who were abused in its schools and orphanages.
Figures show that the Christian Brothers spent only $3.6 million on “legal and litigation expenses” in 2013, the year the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse was established.
But this cost ballooned to $134 million in 2018 – nearly nine times what the group’s officials estimated it would be liable to pay for that year.
Despite the blowout, the order insists it will be able to meet its commitments to survivors through the continued “responsible management of our finances”.
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