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Allegations
of Abuse in Institutions |
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A "fear
factor" at a home for troubled boys allowed sexual abuse by Catholic
brothers to continue unabated, a High Court jury in Christchurch has been
told. One man, who was about
eight years old when he became the victim of Catholic brother Bernard Kevin
McGrath's "sadistic fantasies", said he tried to raise the alarm
with other brothers at Marylands school, on the outskirts of Christchurch. But he was struck by
one brother and told by another not to tell lies, leading him to conclude
that many of the men running the school were complicit in the abuse. "I sort of put it
together. It seems to me like it was all of the group," he said. "There was a big
fear factor going around. You've got to remember that in that school the
brothers were a law unto their own. They had this thing sewn up, they had
power there. We were kids and we had no say over anything. We had no defence,
nothing," he said. After the man's failed
bid to get help, he said the abuse escalated to McGrath shutting him in a
coffin and later to locking him in a room for a month, where he was
repeatedly sexually assaulted. McGrath, 58, has
admitted indecently touching the man, now a prison inmate aged 40, in the
mid-1970s but denies sodomising him. In all he is defending 53 charges of
sodomy and indecency against 16 boys during his time as a dorm master at the
school in the mid-1970s. McGrath pleaded guilty
at the start of the trial to indecency with a 17th boy and the jury was told
he had previously been jailed for sexually abusing boys. The man said he had got
on with McGrath "until he started doing things to me". "The
way I see it now, he was acting out his own sadistic fantasies," he
said. The man said he was
taken out of class and taken to an empty storeroom by McGrath, who ordered
him to undress and caned him when he refused. "Looking into his
eyes (after being caned), it seemed to me he was getting off on that, it was
a big thing to him. He jumped up and down as if he'd scored." He said McGrath then
sodomised him from behind, possibly with the cane. The man said he was
later taken by McGrath to a storeroom in the church at Marylands. McGrath
ordered him into a coffin to clean it and then closed the lid. "I don't know how
long I was there but it seemed quite a while. Then he opened up the coffin
and he had a big smile on his gob and told me to get out and get
undressed," he said. Once again, he said
McGrath sodomised him. "What could I do?
I was young and defenceless. If I was old enough, he wouldn't be sitting
there now. "I started being
aware of the attentions of other brothers. I also started being aware of the
attitudes of other children, who were behaving in the same say I was - angry
and withdrawn." The man began to run
away from the school but after being caught trying to flee he was locked in a
small room for about a month, during which he alleged McGrath regularly
sexually assaulted him. In later years the man
said he spent time in Lake Alice psychiatric hospital and jail for burglaries
and stealing cars "but none for violence or abuse". Raoul Neave, for
McGrath, said the man had claimed he was first abused about a year after
arriving at Marylands, but McGrath was not sent there until two years after. The man replied"
"Um, well, the only I say to that is ... the years were jumbled up and I
can't remember the exact ages I was." Neave suggested the man
had also spoken to other former Marylands pupils about the abuse before
making his complaint. The man said he had
been a cellmate in jail of another alleged victim of McGrath but maintained
they only acknowledged that each had been sexually abused. |
