While there have not been that many state teachers caught, there have been a hell of a lot of clerical teachers, giving the lie to the church claims that they do not offend any more than the general public.

The list below was compiled by the Broken Rites organisation in Australia and may not be a fully comprehensive list since it only includes actual teachers, and not those merely associated with a school. The list speaks for itself.

Brian Dennis Cairns taught primary students (as Brother Cairns) at Catholic schools in Brisbane until 1974. Then, after becoming a lay teacher, he taught at other Brisbane Catholic schools (as Mister Cairns) until 1984. In 1985, he was jailed for seven years for committing serious sexual offences against schoolboys over several years.

Marist Brother David Austin Christian (born 3 December 1942), formerly principal of Marist Brothers’ Newman College, Perth, Western Australia, pleaded guilty to multiple counts of aggravated indecent assault against two boys (aged 10 and 11) in the principal’s office. When charged in 1994, Br Christian had been teaching at Port Hedland, W.A. In 1995, Christian was fined $10,500 ($1,500 per incident) but the Marist Order said it would pay the fine for him.

In the Goulburn Local Court in southern New South Wales in 1989, a Christian Brother was convicted (and was given a suspended jail sentence) for sexually abusing a boy at St Patrick’s College, Goulburn (this school later became Trinity College, Goulburn).

Brother Greg Coffin taught at Salesian College (“Rupertswood”), Sunbury, Victoria, in 1969-1970, and at St Mark’s College, Port Pirie, South Australia, in 1971. In February 1972, he was sentenced to 12 months jail (suspended) for sexual abuse of a boy at the Port Pirie school. Despite this, he was still accepted as a lay teacher (Mr “Coffey”) in Catholic schools. Coffey was sentenced to a 2-year good behaviour bond in Victoria in 1994, plus 30 months jail (suspended) in Victoria in 1997 for offences against boys at Redden College, Preston, Melbourne, in the 1970s.

Marist Brother John Desmond Dyson (born 21 March 1950), who taught at Assumption College, Kilmore, Victoria, was sentenced to 12 months jail after pleading guilty to indecently assaulting three boys, aged 12 to 14. The sentence was served in community work.

Marist Brother Raymond Sidney Foster (born 26 November 1931) was originally called “Brother Celestine”. He taught at Catholic schools in Queensland and New South Wales. In 1999, police interviewed Foster (then aged 67) at a Marist Brothers retirement home in Mittagong, NSW) and charged him with indecent assaults against boys, committed at Chanel College, Gladstone, Queensland, in the 1970s. On 23 March 1999 he was found, hanged, just hours before he was due to appear in a New South Wales court to be extradited to Queensland.

In 1998, Queensland detectives were ready to prosecute Gladwin for committing sexual crimes against schoolboys while he worked (as Christian Brother Gerard Gladwin) in Queensland in the 1960s and ’70s. But, before court proceedings could begin, Gladwin (aged 65) was found dead, gassed in his car, near Brisbane.

Marist Brother Brian Robert Gordon (born 15 December 1942) sexually abused boys while teaching at a Marist Brothers primary school in Dundas, Sydney, in 1969-71. The Marists kept quiet about Gordon’s behaviour and he eventually became the Brisbane diocese’s deputy directory of Catholic Education. In 1998 he was sentenced to a minimum of 12 months jail for eight sexual offences committed in 1969-71 against four boys, aged about 11, at the Sydney school.

Brother Thomas William Grealy, alias Brother “Augustine”, of the Patrician Brothers order, was sentenced in 1997 to seven years jail (parole after four years) after pleading guilty to repeated indecent assaults of two young boys while he was the principal of the primary section of a Patrician Brothers school in Grimwood Street, Granville, in western Sydney, in the 1970s.

In 1990, Phillip John Hardy began training for the Catholic priesthood with the Divine Word Missionaries at Box Hill in Melbourne but he did not reach ordination. In Sydney District Court in 1995, aged 41, he was sentenced to 11 years’ jail (with a minimum of seven years before parole) for sexual offences committed against a boy during an eight-year period, in 1978-1986, when the boy was aged from 8 to 16. During the time of the offences, Hardy was teaching at Marist Brothers College, Eastwood, Sydney, where he was in charge of “religious studies”.

Ronald William Hopkins originally trained to be a Christian Brother but ended up as a lay teacher in Catholic schools. In 2005, Hopkins pleaded guilty to offences (five counts of unlawful sexual intercourse by a teacher, five of indecent assault and one of gross indecency) against five schoolboys, aged 12 to 16, between 1975 and 1991 while he was a teacher at two Adelaide schools — St Bernadette’s in a suburb called St Mary’s and Blackfriars Priory School at Prospect. In the S.A. Supreme Court in 2006, Hopkins (then aged 70) was sentenced to ten years’ jail.

De La Salle Brother Frank Terrence Keating (alias Brother “Ibar” Keating) was sentenced to 8 to 36 months jail in Victoria in 1998, plus 12 months jail (suspended) in Queensland in 2000, all for multiple indecent assaults of boys in Catholic schools. Keating also taught in Western Australia and South Australia.

In the Australian Capital Territory Supreme Court on 23 June 2008, Marist Brother John William Chute (born 13 June 1932), whose religious name is “Brother Kostka” (in honour of a 16th Century saint), was jailed after pleading guilty to sexually molesting four students when they were aged 13 and 14 at Canberra’s Marist College in the 1980s

Kevin John Lynch was originally a Christian Brother, teaching in Catholic schools in Queensland. One of these schools is believed to have been St Brendan’s College, Yeppoon. After leaving the Christian Brothers, he worked as a school counsellor at Brisbane Boys’ Grammar School (Anglican) in the 1980s and at St Paul’s School (Anglican), Bald Hills, Brisbane, in the early 1990s. In 1997, police charged him with committing sexual crimes against boys while working as a counsellor. During prosecution, he committed suicide.

A Catholic former religious Brother, Edward Mamo (born in 1944), has pleaded guilty to having committed multiple sexual offences against boys at Monivae College, a Catholic secondary school, at Hamilton, Victoria, in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Mamo also worked at Chevalier College (Bowral, NSW) and in accommodating Vietnamese refugees in Sydney.

Marist Brother Gerard Joseph McNamara (born 9 March 1938) was sentenced in Melbourne to three years jail (suspended) after pleading guilty to indecently assaulting six boys. McNamara, who taught mainly in Victoria.

Marist Brother Hugh Michael McNamara (born 7 March 1933) taught at St Joseph’s College in Hunters Hill in Sydney as Brother “Oswald” McNamara until about 1978. He ceased being a Brother and then taught as a lay teacher at the Marist Brothers College at Ashgrove in Brisbane, where he was jailed in 1995 for indecently dealing with a boy.

On 10 March 2008, Marist Brother Ross Francis Murrin (born 10 June 1955) was sentenced to 39 months’ jail, with a non-parole period of 18 months, after pleading guilty to indecently assaulting Catholic primary school boys in the 1970s. In February 2010, he received additional jail time after pleading guilty to sexually abusing another boy at a later school.

In Sydney on 21 April 2011, Fr Kevin Francis Phillips (of Mackay in the Rockhampton diocese in Queensland) was jailed after pleading guilty to offences against a boy at St Stanislaus College (a boys’ boarding school) in Bathurst, New South Wales, in 1990.

Father David Edwin Rapson (born 30 July 1953), who was then a member of the Salesians of Don Bosco, was sentenced in 1992 to two years jail after pleading guilty to five incidents of indecently assaulting a 15-year-old boy at Salesian College, “Rupertswood”, in Sunbury (in Melbourne’s north-west), where Rapson was a vice-principal.

Father Michael Francis Reis (known as Mick Reis), who has taught at Monivae College in Victoria and Downlands College in Queensland, was sentenced in Brisbane on 6 November 2008 to 18 months jail (with a minimum of six months) for offences against two young girls in the 1980s and 1990s.

Marist Brother Peter Richard Spratt (born 2 August 1937) used to work at Marist College in Canberra. In 1996 he pleaded guilty to two acts of indecency against a 14-year-old boy from the school. The incidents occurred in 1979 at a Marist Brothers’ residence at Wategoes Beach, Byron Bay, NSW, and at a holiday centre in Jindabyne, NSW. A magistrate at Cooma Local Court placed Spratt on a $2,000, two-year good-behaviour bond. Brother Spratt also taught at Marist Brothers, Pagewood, Sydney.

Marist Brother Gregory Joseph Sutton (born 19 March 1951) taught in the 1980s at Catholic primary schools in New South Wales, where he has admitted committing numerous serious offences, including rapes of young girls and indecent assaults of young boys. He fled to the USA, where he became principal of a Catholic school. He was extradited back to Australia, where he was jailed in 1996 for a maximum of 18 years (with parole possible after 12 years).

Alan Edward Swingler (born in September 1941) was originally a Marist Brother but left the Marist order and became a lay teacher of religious studies at St Joseph’s Christian Brothers’ College, Geelong, Victoria, where he stayed for 18 years. In 1996 Swingler, aged 54, was sentenced to seven years jail (minimum of five years).

After one of his victims finally contacted the police, Albert Matthew Taylor (known as “Brother George”) pleaded guilty in the Sydney District Court on 8 August 1995 to two incidents of indecently assaulting an 11-year-old boy. The assaults occurred in 1967 at De La Salle College, Revesby, Sydney. Taylor, aged 79 in 1995, was placed on a three-year good behaviour bond. Taylor’s other schools included De La Salle College, Orange, NSW.

Christian Brother Peter John Toomey pleaded guilty in 2005 to offences against 10 boys at Trinity Regional College in Brunswick, Melbourne, in the 1970s. He was finally sentenced to 4 years 3 months jail, with parole after 2 years 6 months. Originally the sentence was 27 months jail (with parole after six months) but this was increased after an appeal by the prosecution.

On 4 March 2011 Peter Paul Van Ruth, of Adelaide, was jailed after he pleaded guilty to indecently assaulting two boys in 1969 while he was a religious Brother at Salesian College, “Rupertswood”, Sunbury, Victoria.

Marist Brother Geoffrey Sydney Veness (born 30 September 1953) was sentenced to 12 months jail (suspended) after pleading guilty to offences against a boy who was a pupil at St Augustine’s College, Cairns, Queensland.

Details of these case can be found on the Broken Rites website (http://brokenrites.alphalink.com.au/nletter/bccrime.html)

[Postscript: A word to Cardinal Mahoney (and an echo to Cardinal Pell) – God may be above man, but man is not above the law. Any Pope chosen by tainted Cardinals will also be tainted.]

TOMORROW: Some laws that need to be changed

That’s all I can say

Lewis Blayse (né Lewin Blazevich)