(AUSTRALIA)
Australian Broadcasting Corporation - ABC [Sydney, Australia]
July 27, 2026
By Angelique Donnellan
[See video.]
James Peat and Chris Thorpe carried their pain for decades. Pain borne from alleged sexual abuse when they were children at schools run by Christian Brothers.
Warning: This story contains details of abuse that readers may find disturbing.
The pair, who are both seeking compensation, said they felt like they had been abused all over again, when their cases were put on hold earlier this month after the Catholic order announced it was going broke.
Victims of historic abuse are estimated to be owed around $774 million.
“I can’t sleep at night and I’ve done nothing wrong,” Mr Peat said.
“Shame on you.”
[PHOTO: James Peat says he was sexually assaulted between 1989 and 1991 at St Michael’s Regional High School. (ABC News: Carl Saville)]
The Christian Brothers’s financial collapse follows the transfer of more than 30 schools, now worth an estimated $2 billion, to another entity associated with the Catholic Church called Edmund Rice Education Australia (EREA).
Most of those schools were gifted or transferred for $1, including St Kevin’s College in Melbourne, which has a current site value of $46 million, and Christian Brothers College in Adelaide, valued at $20 million.
“Doesn’t sound Christian to me,” Mr Thorpe told 7.30
[PHOTO: Chris Thorpe had reached a settlement with Christian Brothers but is yet to receive the money. (ABC News: Andrew Altree-Williams)]
Christian Brothers said it requested funding from the broader Catholic Church, but initially none had been provided.
The order proposed selling assets to help fund outstanding payments to abuse victims.
After mounting pressure, on Friday, Edmund Rice Education Australia announced it would pick up the abuse liabilities on behalf of Christian Brothers.
“We are committed to supporting those who have suffered abuse”, EREA said in a statement.
“We are seeking to provide reassurance that we will step in to address future funding shortfalls.”
However, Mr Peat said the damage had already been done.
“It’s a good outcome but they were strong-armed into it. Why not do the right thing in the first place?” Mr Peat said.
Mr Thorpe is still sceptical.
“What do they say? The cheque’s in the mail. So we’ll wait and see,” he said.
“Forgiveness, I thought about that, but I’m a long way from it at the moment.”
Convicted abuser watched the boys shower
Before the statement from EREA, 7.30 went to Wagga Wagga, in regional NSW, to meet with Mr Peat.
[PHOTO: St Michael’s Cathedral, in Wagga Wagga, NSW. (ABC News: Carl Saville)]
Mr Peat alleges he was sexually abused as a student at Wagga’s St Michael’s Regional High School.
“What I’m feeling now has been 30 years inside bottled up,” he told 7.30.
Mr Peat says the incidents occurred in 1989 when gymnastics teacher Chris Frost allegedly touched him while he stretched and watched as he showered.
“You knew it was seductively touching … and yeah, getting watched having showers was inappropriate,” Mr Peat said.
“He just stood at the end. First couple of times … I feel uncomfortable, like I’m a child, and then it was just all the time, and it was just the norm.
[PHOTO: When 7.30 visited St Michael’s Cathedral the lights were on inside. (ABC News: Carl Saville)]
“I would’ve been 15 or something.”
In March this year, Frost was sentenced to three years’ jail for the historic sexual abuse of students.
Mr Peat said he had been in denial for much of his adult life about what happened at St Michael’s and that destructive behaviour saw him land in trouble with the law and the end of his marriage.
“I got very addicted to painkillers, alcohol and speed, and I used to use phenergans and marijuana to come down off of them and maintain a normal life,” he said.
“I ended up in the Wagga police station punching on with a handful of coppers, getting maced and tasered and admitted to the acute ward.”
Only now is he coming to grips with his past after a phone call from a friend.
[PHOTO: James Peat says he has struggled with what he alleges happened to him at St Michael’s Regional High School for much of his adult life. (ABC News: Carl Saville)]
“He said, ‘I know you were groomed like I was’,” Mr Peat said.
“When he told me, I could f***ing breathe.”
Following the conviction of Frost, Mr Peat decided to seek compensation from the Church and Christian Brothers, which ran St Michael’s.
He is relieved survivors will be compensated by Edmund Rice Education Australia, but said the Church had breached his trust again.
“It’s not about the money. It’s just my moving on and getting help,” he said.
‘Hear the boys crying’
Mr Thorpe had reached a settlement agreement with Christian Brothers in April but told 7.30 the past month had taken a heavy toll and even the EREA announcement hadn’t helped much.
[PHOTO: Convicted paedophile Edward Dowlan was a dorm master at St Patrick’s College in Ballarat. (ABC Ballarat: Rochelle Kirkham )]
“It shouldn’t have come to this,” he told 7.30.
“It caused a lot of anxiety, like not sleeping well now, reliving all that again.”
In 1974 Mr Thorpe was 13 and a boarder at St Patrick’s College in Ballarat. His dorm master was Edward Dowlan, who has subsequently been convicted and jailed for six years for sexually abusing boys at various Christian Brothers schools across Victoria.
“He [Dowlan] took a shining to me,” Mr Thorpe recalls of his time at St Patrick’s.
“He would walk around the dormitories at night and you could hear the boys crying sometimes.
“He came to my bed one night, and I don’t want to go into all the nitty-gritty, but I knew what was going on.”
Mr Thorpe fled St Patrick’s soon after with a friend.
[PHOTO: The transfer of assets from Christian Brothers to EREA came under scrutiny. (ABC News: Angelique Donnellan)]
“We put the pillows in the bed while Brother Dowlan was asleep and my friend and I ran off to the train station,” he recalled.
Mr Thorpe said he was speaking out against Christian Brothers to honour his friend, who has since died.
“I don’t really want to be sitting here talking about this,” he said.
“My friend who I ran away with, he would have loved to have done this, but he’s not around anymore. So I do it for him and all the other boys that Dowlan had his little way with.”
Survivors ‘seeking closure’
EREA said its proposed scheme to compensate victims would have to be put to creditors for Christian Brothers and it would be at least six to eight weeks before a vote, and then court approval on the “complex arrangements”.
[PHOTO: The headquarters of Edmund Rice Education in Melbourne. (ABC News: Angelique Donnellan)]
“The Trustees of EREA are committed to ensuring this occurs as expeditiously as possible,” the statement said.
Christian Brothers said it had paid out more than $480 million in compensation and legal costs since 1980.
Mr Peat’s lawyer, Lisa Flynn, said claims accelerated after the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, which began in 2013, with about 337 currently on foot against Christian Brothers nationwide.
“So nearly a quarter of the brothers over a period of time had credible findings of child sexual abuse against them. This abuse was horrific. It affected so many children,” she told 7.30.
Ms Flynn from Shine Lawyers said the asset transfer to EREA started in 2013, at around the same time as the landmark inquiry began.
“They were transferred for very nominal amounts in terms of either zero or a dollar or some other very small amount,”
she said.
[PHOTO: Lawyer Lisa Flynn has questioned the timing of the transfer of assets from Christian Brothers to EREA. (ABC News: Chris Gillette)]
An EREA spokesperson told 7.30 in a statement that: “Christian Brothers asset transfers to EREA were done solely for the advancement of the educational mission of the schools.
“In 2007, EREA was established as a separate entity and it was entrusted with responsibility for governing, operating and stewarding the schools.
“As part of the process, the school assets were transferred from the Christian Brothers Oceania Province to EREA, together with the associated school property.
“The transfer has occurred progressively over the years since 2007 due to the complexity of transferring individual titles across multiple jurisdictions.”
EREA’s acceptance of abuse liabilities heads off an unprecedented courtroom clash with lawyers for victims.
A test case had been set to play out in Victoria’s Supreme Court to have the Trustees of EREA named as a proper defendant, meaning the entity could be pursued over survivors claims. EREA has now accepted being a defendant.
For the victims, though, the uncertainty has been difficult to deal with and they still want accountability.
Mr Peat now lives alone and has been feeling isolated.
“It would [be] good for them to be accountable for what they’ve done. Who knows what people have gone through in the interim,” he said.
Under the EREA agreement, Mr Thorpe should now receive his settlement, but he is still seeking closure.
“I would like to speak to one of the brothers. I would still personally like a brother to come and apologise and look at them eye-to-eye,” he said.
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