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Allegations
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A disgraced former
Catholic brother is behind bars after being found guilty of 21 charges in the
biggest child-sex trial in New Zealand legal history. Bernard Kevin McGrath,
58, showed little emotion as a High Court jury in Christchurch added another
eight victims to the three he had already admitted sexually molesting when he
was a teacher and dorm master at Marylands school at Halswell, Christchurch,
in the 1970s. McGrath has also
admitted sexually abusing another four teenagers while running a life-skills
course for Christchurch street kids in 1991. He was acquitted of 32
charges – 23 by the jury and nine having been discharged during the trial –
including all of the most serious charges of sodomy. As the solemn-faced
jury members returned to court after 33 hours of deliberations over four
days, McGrath avoided their gaze until after they returned a not-guilty
verdict to the first charge of inducing a nine-year-old boy to do an indecent
act on him. The next verdict was
guilty, and he stood clasping the dock with both hands, at times hanging his
head and at others standing with his mouth hanging slightly open, as the
other 42 verdicts were returned about his alleged activities with vulnerable
schoolboys 30 years ago when he was a young Catholic brother with the Order
of St John of God. Justice Chisholm
rejected McGrath's application for bail and remanded him in custody for sentence
next month. McGrath is just one of
four clergy and brethren from the order of St John of God to have been
accused by Christchurch police of historic child-sex offences at Marylands
between the 1950s and the 1970s. Two others, including
the head of the school at the time McGrath was there, are fighting
extradition from Australia. Another senior St John
of God brother, aged in his 80s, has dodged extradition because of his
diminishing mental abilities and the 50-year gap since the alleged
indecencies. The Australasian branch
of the St John of God order has paid out $5.1 million so far to men who claim
they were sexually molested at Marylands. The figure had been on hold while
the trial progressed. An 0800 number was set up
by the order in 2002 after The Press exposed claims of widespread and
institutionalised sexual abuse at the school. It received more than 125
submissions, although not all related to Marylands. Catholic Church of New
Zealand communications director Lyndsay Freer said the $5.1m settlement was
probably the Catholic Church's biggest in New Zealand. "I would imagine
that the St John of God have paid out more individual settlements than any
other body in the Catholic Church (in New Zealand)," Freer said. "This settlement
reflects the gravity of the complaints." Freer said the Catholic
Church did not pay for settlements and it was up to the order to fund it. The
High Court jury had been told McGrath had been jailed in the mid-1990s for
sexually abusing two boys at Marylands when he was there in the 1970s and for
sexually abusing four other teenage boys in 1991 after he returned to run a
life-skills course in Christchurch. In between, he was sent
to head a Catholic boarding school for troubled boys at Morriset, north of
Sydney, where he sexually molested a young boy in his care. McGrath had been
sentenced to three years jail in Christchurch for the earlier offending and
had then been sent to Australia, where he was sentenced to nine months jail
for abusing the boy there. The boy was later awarded $430,000 by the order. After another 17 former
Marylands boys came forward with sexual-abuse allegations following
investigations by The Press, McGrath agreed to return to Christchurch from
his home in Australia and face trial. McGrath pleaded guilty
to a charge of indecency at the start of the trial but denied another 53
charges, claiming he had already admitted the full extent of his sexual
offending against children. His lawyer, Raoul
Neave, contended that the complainants' evidence was confused, exaggerated
and unreliable. Prosecutor Chris Lange
said some details about dates and locations might be wrong, but the essential
elements of their claims were founded on truth. |
