AUSTRALIA
ABC News
By Sarah Farnsworth
Updated February 22, 2016
A former student of St Patrick’s College in Ballarat says he was beaten up by convicted child abuser Brother Edward Dowlan after reporting him to the school for “putting his hands” down students’ pants.
Timothy Barlow told the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse he took it as “common knowledge” that boys were being abused at the school as rumours about brothers sexually assaulting students in their dorms was well known.
“It was survival of the fittest,” he told the inquiry.
Mr Barlow was on the student representative council at the Christian Brother’s school in 1973.
He said he saw Brother Dowlan putting his hands down the pants of students, describing it as frequent enough for all students to know it happened.
Mr Barlow was asked to help by younger students and moved that the student council ask principal Brother Paul Nangle to intervene.
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