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Accusations of Abuse in Institutions

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The Press
July 10, 2002

Abuse probe begins
by Yvonne Martin

Police are investigating several complaints of sexual abuse from former pupils of a Catholic residential school in Christchurch and one against a former teaching Marist brother.

Hornby Detective Senior Sergeant Dave Landreth confirmed that the police have begun inquiries into complaints against a few brothers from the Order of St John of God, which ran Marylands school until 1984.

Police are also investigating a complaint from a 53-year-old Christchurch unemployed man who attended Xavier College in the early 1960s and claims he was sexually and physically abused by one of the Marist Brothers who taught there.

The Marist Brothers have already issued a written apology to a second Christchurch man -- a 53-year-old businessman who attended Xavier College about the same time -- for abuse he allegedly suffered.

The Marist order opened its files to The Press yesterday, saying 17 brothers in the New Zealand province have had abuse allegations made against them over the decades. Of them, four have been convicted in court, including Brother Kenneth Camden, a former Christchurch headmaster jailed for eight months after admitting indecencies against two boys.

The order has had another 22 calls since the Society of Mary (Marist priests and brothers) set up a freephone to help victims report abuse. Seven complaints were made against brothers who had died and six related to brothers who had left the order.

The Upper Hutt CIB is investigating six new complaints against a former Marist priest, Alan Woodcock, a music teacher at St Patrick's College at Silverstream accused of abusing boys in the 1980s. They follow three existing complaints. Police are considering extraditing Woodcock from England.

The 53-year-old unemployed Christchurch man, whom The Press has agreed to call Paul, complained to the Marist Brothers in late 2000 about his treatment by one of their members at Xavier College (at that time run by the Marists on the site now occupied by Catholic Cathedral College in Barbadoes Street.)

Paul claims that he was sexually abused three times in one year and that he was also physically punished.

He met the brothers in Auckland a year ago and they encouraged him to take his complaint to the police, which he did last month. The brothers also paid for an $1100 word processor and encouraged Paul to write a book about his childhood ordeal.

"They were very, very open," he said.

The order has stepped aside now that his complaint is with the police. The accused brother left the order in 1968.

The Marist brother that the other Xavier College old boy accused of abuse (and received a written apology for) is now in his 80s, living outside Christchurch among a community of older brothers. He has denied any abuse, saying he was just being "grandfatherly".

The apology, seen by The Press, was for "the hidden pain you have carried in your heart all through the years of your adolescent and adult life".

Brother Camden, jailed for indecencies, remains a Marist Brother. He is retired and living in a brothers' community outside Christchurch.

Marist Brothers have paid $140,000 to victims of five brothers, including about $2000 to two alleged victims in Christchurch.

Brother Henry Spinks, who heads the Marist Brothers' professional standards committee, said the money paid for counselling and further education.