Sins of the Brothers
28/06/08
It’s 7.30 on a cold winter morning, and the first of Canberra’s Marist College students are filtering in to the Pearce school. A 12-year-old boy makes his way towards the monastery, where the school’s resident brothers live. The brothers’ residence is strictly out of bounds to all students at all times. About 20 rothers live here at any given time in the dormitory-style accommodation. Although located on the school premises, between the secondary and primary buildings, the monastery is their home, and students are promptly ushered away if they even loiter near it. But this boy has special permission it’s his job to wake up Brother Kostka Chute. Most people would use an alarm clock, but Brother Kostka prefers one of his Year 7s to greet him first thing in the morning. It seems unusual, staff think, but then Brother Kostka does have a special bond with the boys. There’s nothing sinister, right?
See: http://canberra.yourguide.com.au/news/local/news/news-features/sins-of-the-brothers/799661.aspx
Pontiff has chance to lift the church’s pall of shame
Ean Higgins and Nicola Berkovic; 28/6/08
Like other young students at St Matthew’s Catholic private school in Canberra, Tracey Schell looked up to her pastoral priest, Patrick Cusack, whose church was in the school grounds. “Everyone loved him, we thought he was a wonderful priest,” she tells Inquirer. So, when she was nine, it seemed natural that Cusack would go to her class, ask the teacher if she could help him prepare for mass and take her to a quiet part of the church. But during the next couple of years, as she prepared for holy communion, there were many such encounters in which, she alleges, Cusack raped her, at least a half-dozen times. “He told me it was just a secret between the two of us,” Schell says, speaking to the media for the first time. “He made me feel that I was something special.” Cusack died in 1977, aged 49. In 1994 the Catholic archdiocese issued a press release saying, “Reports coming to light 17 years after his death that Fr Pat Cusack sexually molested children have caused widespread shock and sadness, Catholic archbishop of Canberra and Goulburn Francis Carroll said today.”
See: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23933517-28737,00.html
Tags: Australia, Christianity, Pedophilia