MARIST Brothers Australia has apologised to the victims of Hamilton Marist Brother Patrick Butler nearly nine years after his death, and less than two weeks after former students made public their child sex allegations against him from the 1970s.
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‘‘The Marist Brothers reiterate their enduring apology to the victims of Patrick Butler and the victims of other Brothers or school employees,’’ a statement to the Newcastle Herald on Tuesday said.
But the Catholic order’s claim it had no record of complaints against Brother Patrick before 1991 was flatly rejected by a number of former Hamilton students who contacted the Herald after an article on April 4 named him as an alleged child sex offender.
The former students named Marist Brothers who were alleged to have been told that Brother Patrick was sexually abusing children in class at the Hamilton school between 1970 and 1981.
The Marist Brothers statement, released this week after questions from the Herald, raised further questions about why Brother Patrick was allowed to tutor students at the order’s prestigious Ashgrove College in Brisbane in 2001 despite complaints to the Marist Brothers through the 1990s while he was at the school, and allegations that former students made directly to police between 1992 and 1995.
Brother Patrick was retired in 2001, aged 71, after an 11-year-old Ashgrove College boy alleged he was sexually abused while sitting at his desk being tutored for maths. Brother Patrick was charged with indecently dealing with the boy, but a Brisbane jury in 2002 was directed to enter a not guilty verdict after the Crown case was heard.
In its statement this week, Marist Brothers Australia said it was ‘‘unaware of whether the Queensland Police knew of the NSW allegations’’.
Former Hunter Marist Brothers student Bob O’Toole, who received an apology from the order after it accepted he was sexually abused by Brother Leon, also known as Noel Mackey, in the 1950s, was scathing in his assessment of an apology in 2015 for offences by a Marist Brother who died in 2006, and only after allegations were raised in the media.
He said it was devastating to think of the impact of a not guilty finding in 2002 on a 12-year-old boy, and appalling that the Marist Brothers were ‘‘unaware’’ what police knew about other allegations against Brother Patrick.
‘‘Apparently the Marists didn’t report him to police, but that’s their form,’’ Mr O’Toole said.
‘‘The fact that they’ve come out with this apology and admissions today tells a tale of them not accepting responsibility or accountability for anything until they’re absolutely forced to.
‘‘It’s taken an article in the newspaper and responses from former students for them to even offer an apology.’’
In its statement, the Marist Brothers said an annual Ashgrove College sporting award named in honour of Brother Patrick was discontinued. The college told the Herald early this month that the award was presented to a student in 2014.
Marist Brothers did not respond to questions about whether the decision to discontinue the award was made in the past two weeks, after the Herald contacted the school.
The order said it had received complaints about Brother Patrick from students at three Marist Brothers schools, but did not name the schools.
Brother Patrick, whose real name was Thomas Joseph Butler, made his first vows at 17 in 1946, and first taught at Hamilton in 1948. He was moved to Marist schools at Mosman, Darlinghurst and its flagship, St Josephs at Hunters Hill, before he was sent to Queensland in 1962.
He spent two years at Hamilton when he returned to NSW from Queensland in 1963, before being moved to Eastwood, Parramatta, and then Hamilton again in 1970. He taught at Marist Brothers Kogarah and Marcellin College at Randwick through the 1980s before moving to Ashgrove College in Brisbane from 1989, when he was described as a remedial teacher.
Marist Brothers denied any knowledge of a former Hamilton student’s allegations that he repeatedly punched Brother Patrick during an incident at football training in the early 1970s, after Brother Patrick taunted him and threw a punch at the student.
He alleged Brother Patrick would ‘‘come up behind you in class and he’d have his hands halfway down your pants while you were just sitting there’’.
The former student said he was not allowed to represent the school at sport after the incident, which he alleged was witnessed by a number of other students.
Other former students who have contacted the Herald said students routinely referred to Brother Patrick as ‘‘Pat the Poof’’, and teachers must have known about the allegations against him.
At least one student said allegations against Marist Brothers like Brother Patrick and Brother Romuald – who will be sentenced in June for child sex crimes against 19 former students – and others had only been made public in recent times because of the number of prominent Hunter men who had been associated with Marist Brothers schools.
