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Broken Rites Australia helps victims of church-related sex-abuse. By a Broken Rites researcherAn Australian-born Catholic priest, Father Julian Fox, now lives in Rome, where he has a role at the world headquarters of the Salesian religious order (the Salesians of Don Bosco). He travels the world on behalf of the Salesians. For example, in February 2009, he was in Ireland, conducting a seminar at a boys' secondary school, Salesian College in Kildare. But Australia does not seem to figure highly in Father Fox's seminar itinerary.
During his long career as a priest in Australia, Father Fox was a minister, teacher and administrator at several Salesian schools, including Rupertswood college,a boarding school at Sunbury, north-west of the city of Melbourne.
Luke’s storyLuke was born in 1964. His father died and his mother sent the boy to Rupertswood College, Sunbury, as a boarder in 1979 (for Year 8). He stayed at the college for a year and a half. The mother presumed that the Salesian Fathers would be a good role model for a boy with no male parent.It is alleged that Luke was sexually abused while at this school. According to Luke, he reported the sexual abuse to Father Terence Jennings, who was the principal (called the rector) of Rupertswood college. According to Luke, Jennings intimidated Luke into remaining silent about the abuse. That is, Jennings covered up the alleged abuse. As well as being the college principal, Jennings had also previously been the provincial superior (i.e., the head) of the Salesian order in the whole of Australia. So this story goes right to the top of the Salesian order in Australia. Jennings died in 2001. Luke knew that he was prohibited from telling his devout Catholic family about the abuse. The boy became rebellious against adult authority and ended up engaging in anti-social and self-damaging activities. Luke's mother believes that, as it turned out, the Salesians were the worst possible role model for this boy. They disrupted his adolescent development disastrously, she says. In the late 1990s, Broken Rites Australia took up Luke’s case with the Salesian order. The Salesians were reluctant to help at first but, when Broken Rites persisted, the Salesians eventually made an out-of-court legal settlement with Luke. The Salesians were mainly interested in getting Luke to sign a deed of release, in which Luke gave up his legal right to sue the Salesians in the Supreme Court for damages. In 2006, six years after the settlement, Luke died, aged 42. Broken Rites continued to be in contact with Luke's mother, Margaret. Father Julian FoxFather Julian Fox is originally from the Australian state of Tasmania. As well as teaching at Melbourne's Rupertswood college, he also taught at Dominic College in Hobart, Tasmania, and was headmaster at St Joseph's Salesian College, Ferntree Gully (in Melbourne's east).He also served a period as the Australian leader ("provincial") of the Salesian order in the 1980s. By 2000, he had left Australia and worked on a Salesian project in Fiji. In 2003 he was given a position in the Salesians' international communications office in Rome. The Salesians have some prominence in Rome. A member of the Salesian order — Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone — has been an important figure in the Vatican since the 1990s. In 2006 Bertone became the Vatican's Seretary of State. As part of his new role, Father Julian Fox now travels the world as a Salesian priest, conducting computer seminars for Salesian schools and other church organisations — in other countries, rather than in Australia. Further reading
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