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Broken Rites Australia helps victims of church-related sex-abuse. By a Broken Rites researcher
The Sydney District Court has jailed three priests who comprised the entire leadership of a Catholic religious order. The St Gerard Majella Society, operating in the Parramatta diocese in western Sydney, consisted of a core of three priests who recruited and "trained" a pool of young Brothers. The three priests committed sexual abuse against the trainees.
In sentencing, the judges said the three priests took advantage of the trainees' naively and their vow of obedience. The trainees lived an "almost a child-like existence" in the order. Pritchard, for example, silenced his victims by saying "nobody would believe" that Catholic priests would commit such acts. The background The St Gerard Majella Society was formed by Sweeney in 1958 to conduct religious classes for Catholic students in state high schools. It had the blessing of Cardinal Gilroy, the then archbishop of Sydney. Sweeney recruited like-minded men as Brothers, some being upgraded to priests. Members wore conservative neck-to-ankle clerical cassocks. The Society administered the Catholic parish church at Greystanes (near Parramatta), of which Sweeney was the parish priest, and also the nearby Newman Catholic High School, where Pritchard was the principal. The order had several monasteries where it conducted camps and retreats for secondary school students and for young military personnel, such as naval apprentices. It trained novice Brothers (some beginning as young as 16), who were bound by rules of obedience to the priests in charge. Parents, students and parishioners complained about the St Gerard priests but nothing was done. However, the cover-up began to crumble in April 1993 when Father Pritchard pleaded guilty in Liverpool Court to indecent assault of a young naval apprentice who was in his care. Pritchard was placed on a $2,000 good behaviour bond. Although it did not attract media attention, this case prompted other St Gerard victims to think about redress. In December 1993, after Broken Rites publicised its national telephone hotline, we began receiving calls from several ex-Brothers. Each told us about the St Gerard Society's systematic sexual abuse. It was virtually a paedophile organisation, running a male harem. The ex-Brothers also faxed us several confidential memoranda written by Bishop Bede Heather, of the Parramatta diocese, indicating that the church was going into damage control. One memo, in May 1993, said Heather had asked two Sydney priests, Rodger Austin and Peter Blayney, to gather written statements from St Gerard Society victims about the abuse. After this process, a second memo in September 1993 said Heather was suspending Sweeney, Pritchard and Robinson from priestly duties. However, the laity were not told the truth. For example, the Greystanes parish newsletter merely announced that Father Sweeney "has elected to resign" as parish priest to have "a necessary time of renewal". Broken Rites advised the ex-Brothers to give statements to the NSW Police child protection unit, which they did during 1994. Detectives then located further victims. The chief burglar While this police investigation was proceeding, another cover-up in the Parramatta diocese became exposed. Broken Rites learned that one of the diocese's most prominent priests, Father Richard Cattell, 54, pleaded guilty on 19 August 1994 to five counts of indecently assaulting a 14-year-old boy. The boy had gone to Cattell (as a parish priest) in 1973-6 after being molested by a teacher. In 1991 Bishop Heather appointed Cattell as his vicar-general to administer the 48 parishes of the Parramatta diocese (including Greystanes, where the St Gerard Society had its headquarters). Therefore, anyone who wanted to complain about sexual abuse in the St Gerard Brothers in the early 1990s would have gone through a vicar-general who was himself a paedophile. To report sexual crimes to the paedophile vicar-general Cattell was like reporting burglaries to a burglar. How many sex-abuse complaints were received by Cattell? And where, are the files? [This is why Broken Rites recommends that victims should first report a church-abuse offence to the police child-protection unit, not merely to a church official. The church official is a colleague of the offender and may himself be an offender.] Police raid Broken Rites alerted the media to attend Cattell's sentencing on 9 December 1994, when he was jailed for two years. Heather later wrote a letter to Cattell's parishioners, supporting Cattell. "He [Cattell] continues to be our brother priest," Heather wrote. St Gerard Society victims informed Broken Rites that four days later, on 13 December 1994, detectives asked Heather to hand over documents (including the Austin/Blayney report) relating to the St Gerard sex-abuse complaints but Heather allegedly refused. The detectives therefore returned with search warrants for both Heather's office and the Sydney Archdiocese offices and seized the missing documents, including many written complaints that had not been forwarded to the police Three days later, on 16 December 1994, Heather quietly announced that he was disbanding the St Gerard Society. The church evidently hoped that there would be no organisation left for the police to investigate but Broken Rites wanted the matter exposed. So we tipped off the media, and therefore in late December 1994 the Sydney and Parramatta newspapers began revealing the St Gerard scandal. This brought us more calls from informants. The church promptly began disposing of the St Gerard Society's property, believed to be worth millions of dollars. This was a big windfall for the church coffers. The disposal would make it difficult for victims to sue the St Gerard Society for damages. Innocent Brothers who had spent their teens and perhaps their twenties in the St Gerard order now had no job and no qualifications for a new one. On 19 December 1994, Heather wrote to his clergy about the Cattell and St Gerard matters. He gave Cattell's prison address, with suggestions for those priests "intending to visit". He also indicated his depressed mood about all the scandals, saying that "priestly ministry has suffered a severe setback in the eyes of many people." (That is, it was unfortunate that the scandals had become public.) Sweeney, Pritchard and Robinson were arrested in early 1995 and their court appearances spanned three years. A week before the sentencing of Sweeney, Bishop Heather suddenly took early retirement, realising that the three sentencings were about to be reported in the media. The cover-up was over. FOOTNOTE: The above article is based on Broken Rites research and is the most comprehensive article available about the St Gerard Majella case. Smaller aspects of the case were reported in some newspapers: Sydney Daily Telegraph 19-7-1997, 13-11-1997, Sydney Morning Herald 13-11-1997, 3-3-1998, 4-3-1998, 28-3-1998; The Australian, 23-12-1994, p13, Sydney Sun-Herald 16-11-1997, p56. |
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