MELBOURNE (AUSTRALIA)
The Age
Sept. 23, 2019
By Debbie Cuthbertson, Andrew Thomson, Farrah Tomazin and Chris Vedelago
The Christian brother, full name Kenneth Paul McGlade, raped the 10-year-old Warrnambool boy at St Joseph’s Christian Brothers College in 1969. Half a century later, Darren still bears a physical reminder.
“The day after he attacked me I started chewing my fingernails, so bad I’ve got no nail on my left little finger,” he said. “I used to hold it under my hand so no one would see it.”
Now, at 61, Darren is finally feeling strong enough to tell his story in support of other victims. “If anyone asks now I tell them. ‘I did nothing wrong. It wasn’t my fault’,” he said.
Darren is just one of at least 140 people who have made claims of child abuse against the Catholic church in the Ballarat diocese – an extensive region covering 41 parishes in the western third of the state.
It’s one of the epicentres of the Catholic child abuse scandal in Victoria.
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