Abuse by Marist brother 'criminal'

A MARIST brother who taught at a school in Cairns where boys were molested has been forced to acknowledge the criminal nature of the behaviour.

Brother Andrew Moraghan, who was a dorm master at boys' boarding school St Augustine's College in Cairns in the 1980s, at first told a national inquiry into child sex abuse that accusations of abuse were so rare in those days that he would not know how to characterise it.

Br Moraghan was being questioned by Justice Peter McClellan, chair of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse at a hearing in Sydney on Thursday.

The commission is examining Towards Healing, the Catholic Church process for handling abuse complaints, by exploring what happened to four abuse victims, one of whom, DK, has accused senior religious staff at the school of failing to act against a brother, Ross Murrin, even though in 1981 they knew of a number of complaints against him.

Murrin is now in jail for offences he later committed at schools in Sydney.

Br Moraghan told the hearing he did not know that Murrin was a sex offender until he was charged in 2008 with matters unrelated to St Augustine's.

In 2010 Br Moraghan - along with a previous witness at Thursday's hearing, former principal at St Augustine's Br Gerald Burns - attended a Towards Healing mediation session with DK, a 49-year-old father of three who wanted to ask them what they knew about Murrin's behaviour and why they did not act to protect other boys.

Justice McClellan pressed Br Moraghan on how he, as an experienced teacher and a manager at the school in 1981, would have characterised an allegation that a brother had touched the genitals of a boy.

"I think my first response would have been shock... I would think it would be a gross act of irresponsibility," Br Moraghan said.

Justice McClellan asked: "Would you see it as a crime?"

When the witness said he did not know how to answer that because it would have been something so completely out of common practice, Justice McClellan asked if he would consider it a crime if a brother touched a female school child.

The witness said he would consider it the same as touching a male pupil.

Justice McClellan said: "So you would see it as a crime?"

Br Moraghan said he would see both acts as a crime.

On Thursday Br Burns denied he lied to DK in the mediation session about his knowledge of other complaints by boys about Murrin's behaviour.

Br Burns told the commission that at the time he was at St Augustine's he would have seen the behaviour as a moral lapse not a crime.

The hearing continues

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