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Child abuse

Abuse in State Care Inquiry: Catholic school rape victim emotionally recalls principal's sexual abuse, frustration at Church's redress process

Warning: This article discusses sexual abuse and mental health.

A rape victim has given evidence of the sexual abuse he suffered while at a Catholic school in the 1980s, emotionally telling a Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in State Care of his experiences and the myriad struggles he faced in the aftermath.

The man, identified only as John, spoke about the abuse, its impacts and the frustrations he's experienced throughout the Catholic Church's redress process on day five of the Inquiry's faith-based redress hearing.

The hearing is focused on the redress processes of the Catholic Church, Anglican Church and the Salvation Army. The Inquiry is investigating the adequacy of these processes and what needs to be done to better support people who have been abused or neglected in faith-based institutions.

How the sexual abuse began

On Friday morning, John told the Royal Commission he was sexually abused by his principal, Brother Giles, while he was a student at Xavier Intermediate School in Christchurch, run by the Marist Brothers.

He started at the school in 1980 as a 12-year-old, and within weeks had been targeted for abuse. John said Brother Giles used fear and intimidation to groom and later rape him.

"In the first couple of weeks of starting the school, he singled me out saying he wanted to talk to me and sent me to wait outside his office. That's how the abuse started," he said.

"Sometimes he would have his cane sitting on his desk to intimidate me. He explained that my parents had sent me to the school to help me become a man and it was Brother Giles' job to make sure that happened.

"He would sit there, talk to me about the male parts of my body, and said he would teach me everything I needed to know."

John says Brother Giles used to talk about masturbation regularly, and urged him to 'practice'. These conversations left him "really scared and uncomfortable", but he never thought to question it because Brother Giles was in a position of power.

"I didn't take too much notice of this at the time because Brother Giles was the principal and I respected his authority, but looking back I can see that he was grooming me."

The Inquiry heard of occasions in which Brother Giles called John to his office and made him look at a porn magazine while he checked on classes, before returning and asking him how his body was reacting to the images.

"I would have to say what he wanted to hear," John recounted. "I was 12 and knew nothing about sex. I had no experience and I had no feeling down there."

The abuse soon escalated. John says Brother Giles began making him leave his pants at the door when he came to his office, and then engaged in sex acts with him. He said Brother Giles would hurt him if he didn't comply or react how he wanted.

John says during the grooming phase, he would get called to Brother Giles' office two or three times a week. However once the sexual abuse started, it could be as often as multiple times in a day.

"This kept going for two years and only stopped because I left the school at the end of form two," he said. "I begged my parents for the whole time that I was there not to send me back to Xavier."

Most of the abuse occurred in the principal's office, but it took place elsewhere too. John recalls being told by classmates that Brother Giles wanted him to serve at a mass but when he turned up, no one was there.

"I would go over there and there would be no cars in the carpark. I would walk into an empty cathedral and know I was about to be abused. I would be in trouble if I didn't go, and I would be in trouble if I did go. I was so scared and trembling with fear."

John had made attempts to stop the abuse. He would actively avoid contact with Brother Giles, hiding before the school bell went in the morning and trying to position himself in the middle of a group of boys or around other teachers so it was harder for him to be singled out.

But these evasion strategies were always foiled by a mandatory check on whether students had eaten their lunches, which gave Brother Giles an opportunity to inconspicuously instruct John to join him in his office, where abuse would occur.

John told his father a few weeks into starting school, while he was being groomed, that he felt the things going on in Brother Giles' office were inappropriate. But his father, who was deeply religious, didn't believe a man of the cloth would do such things and told him never to bring it up again.

"After that, there was a total change in my relationship with my father. He was no longer the same with me. Everything about the way he talked to me and the way he reacted to me changed."

John says his father, with whom he once shared an "unbreakable bond", became distant. He stopped showing affection, stopped telling John he loved him and stopped taking him out fishing and for other activities.

"My dad pushed me away and didn't want me around him. This caused a lot of heartache. I couldn't talk to him and our relationship became one of conflict later as I became very angry."

John says he felt trapped and had to deal with everything himself, as his father refused to hear him out, his mother was too busy and he didn't feel comfortable speaking to his siblings about what was happening.

Nor did he speak to his classmates about it.

"I didn't try to tell anyone else as I was fearful of the repercussions from Brother Giles. He was the Principal and we were all very scared of him," he said.

"Sometimes when I went into his office, the cane was sitting on his desk and it was like he was sending me a message. I feared him, I was confused, and as a 12-year-old, I was ashamed."

Impact of the abuse

John says when the rapes started, he was scared to go to school on a Monday. On Sunday nights, he wouldn't sleep and tried to make the night last as long as I could.

"I was always in fear, always in pain and always trying to hide from Brother Giles," he told the Royal Commission.

He says upon returning from Brother Giles' office he would be "away with the fairies" and occasionally wet himself.

The abuse rendered him unable to concentrate in class, and the quality of his school work and relationship with his teachers deteriorated as a result. The physical pain he suffered meant he would sometimes find it uncomfortable just sitting or riding his bike home.

The abuse also had another consequence; after having lots of friends in primary school, he was suddenly unable to forge or maintain friendships with classmates, and his tendency to wet his pants made him a target for bullies.

"I was the kid that pissed himself. I had no friends," he said.

After two years at Xavier Intermediate, John's parents moved and he went to a high school closer to his new house. John's poor academic performance followed him, however, and he became a truant. 

He left school for good at the earliest opportunity, although his lack qualifications meant manual labour was his only real career option. To this day John has few friends and tends to choose work that allows him to be alone.

He also has depression and anger management problems, both of which started shortly after suffering the abuse. His first marriage failed and he no longer has a speaking relationship with his daughter as a result.

John has since remarried, but admits his anger has had a negative effect on the new relationship.

Speaking out and the Church's response

John's father died in May 2019. It was a tragedy that shook him to the core, as he was never able to repair their relationship before he passed away.

It was also the prompt for him to finally speak out about his abuse for the first time. He told his brother initially, who responded by telling him that it explains a lot about why he is the person he is.

But it was his wife who was first to hear the full extent of his experiences - 40 years on from when he was first abused. 

"I was fearful it could end our marriage, knowing that it was me with another man. I felt disgusted. I felt very low. I knew that it would either make us or break us," John told the hearing.

"My wife wrote an email in rage to the [Catholic Church's National] Office of Professional Standards (NOPS), and she has supported me throughout the whole complaints process. I complained because I was looking for answers.

"I wanted to know were there others abused, and how could this happen? why was this allowed to happen?"

After writing to NOPS in June 2019, an investigator flew to meet with him the following month and submitted a full report on John's experiences to the Sexual Abuse Protocol Committee in February 2020.

Having not received a copy of the report, communication between John and the investigator slowed down and he became anxious. After his wife requested counselling sessions, he was surprised to receive contact directly from the Marist Brothers, who had run Xavier Intermediate.

"It made me feel like I was being passed back to the very organisation that I was running from," he told the hearing. "The Marist Brothers were the reason for my heartache and I didn't feel like it was the right thing for me to have them controlling my healing process."

John agreed to meet with Brother Horide from the Marist Brothers, who presented John with a document that showed previous complaints had been made against Brother Giles.

He describes finding out about the others as "a step in the right direction", but says he wasn't told what the outcome of the other complaints had been.

Communication with Marist Brothers was always a struggle. For six weeks over the COVID-19 lockdown, for instance, he did not get a single update or message from Brother Horide and said this was "very distressing".

"He had plenty of time on his hands and we were wondering what was going on," John said. "We were trying to get him to respond. My wife had to email NOPS again to find out what was going on because Brother Horide wouldn't answer us."

After NOPS got in contact with him, Brother Horide finally made contact again in email format. However John was unhappy with the lack of correspondence.

"He had left it so long... He had all the time at home, surely a phone and a computer available. He could have asked if I was okay."

Eventually, Brother Horide offered John an ex gratia payment of $15,000 from the Marist Brothers, which was later upped to $20,000, and a holiday that came with a Deed of Release he would need to sign. 

John said the offers were "an insult" as Brother Giles had enjoyed a full and good life despite having ruined his, and he rejected them.

"The Marist Brothers were the perpetrators of my grief that I had gone through all these years. I let them come into my home and be in my space, yet I felt like they'd let me down again."

John believes he should've received a formal apology for the abuse he suffered from Pope Francis. Instead, he said, Marist Brothers took no vicarious liability for the actions of Brother Giles.

Eventually, John's negotiations with the Marist Brothers descended into a legal battle, which he said just brought great stress and added another obstacle on the path to healing.

He said the organisation has stalled on negotiations while it awaits the outcome of the Royal Commission of Inquiry.

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