Sexual abuse in the Congregation of the Society of Mary (Marists)

In 2017, the Marist Brothers released a statement to survivors and victims of abuse. It was issued by the 22nd General Chapter and stated that "Abuse is the very antithesis of our Marist values, and undermines the very purpose of our Institute. Any abuse of children is a betrayal of the noble ideals of our founder, St Marcellin Champagnat".^[1]

Then the institution fought against adequate compensation measures for survivors of the abuse.^[2]

The Marist Brothers then offered less in compensation to Fijian survivors, than they had in New Zealand, leading to accusations of racism.^[3]

Summarize Timeline Fact Check

From June 2014, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, initiated as a royal commission of inquiry by the Australian Government and supported by all of its state governments,^[4] began investigating the response of Marist Brothers to allegations of child sexual abuse in schools in the Australian Capital Territory, New South Wales and Queensland.^[5] A number of expert witnesses, former students, former teachers, former principals, former and current Marist officials and clergy, and one of the clergy at the centre of the allegations gave evidence or made statements before the commission.^{[6][7][8][9][10]}

In 2017, the commission published a report which documents significant evidence of child abuse at the hand of members of the Marist order and evidence that the response of the order systematically exacerbated the problems relating to abuse.^[11] Included in the report was a finding that "many alleged perpetrators remained in the same positions with access to children for years and sometimes decades after initial and successive allegations of child sexual abuse were raised".^[11] In many cases the Commission heard of "the minimisation of allegations of child sexual abuse".^[11] One of the key systematic issues that came to light was that it was typical for Brothers to move through many communities and ministries in their lifetime. In the 1960s and 1970s there were typically up to 100 transfers each year.^[11] As of 2017, compensation payments made totaled approximately $AUD2.7 million.^[11]

In March 2015, a former Marist Brother was arrested over a number of sex offences allegedly committed at St Joseph's College in Hunters Hill and St Gregory's College in Campbelltown in the 1980s.^[12]

In September 2016, during a royal commission hearing, the brother provincial of the Marist Brothers in Australia, Brother Peter Carroll, formally apologised to the family of Andrew Nash, whose suicide in 1974 at the age of 13 almost certainly resulted from sexual abuse by three of the order's predatory brothers – Dominic, Patrick and Romuald – and acknowledged that they had many more victims than the dozens who had come forward so far.^[13]

Other cases, documented in the report, included those related to Brother Chute who, in 2008, was convicted of 19 child sex offences against six of his former students during the period 1985 to 1989. 48 claims had been made of abuse that occurred from 1959 to 1990 at 6 different schools, while 40 students at Marist College Canberra laid complaints during the period 1976 to 1990. The Marist Brothers did not report any allegations of child sexual abuse to the police in the period 1962 to 1993.^[14]

Separately, in August 1996, Brother Gregory Sutton pleaded guilty to a total of 67 child sex offences in relation to 15 students at schools in New South Wales. Sutton had taught at six Marist schools between 1970 and 1986 and there were complaints about the abuse of 27 children made against him during this period.^[14] Sutton faced the courts again in Canberra in 2017, when he was given a suspended sentence after sexually assaulting two boys in Canberra in the 1980s.^[15]

In March 2025, Sutton received a further 15 months suspended sentence for sexually abusing a boy at a school in Innisfail, Queensland, between 1973 and 1975.^[16]

In September 2018, Australian Marist Brother Gerard McNamara, 80, was sentenced to nine months in prison for molesting five boys at St Paul's Catholic College, where he served as principal between 1970 and 1975.^[17] He had molested one of these boy 30 times.^[17] In May 2020, McNamara began serving a second stint in prison after pleading guilty to indecent assault of more than 15 male students between 1970 and 1975.^[18] This time, he received a sentence of 35 months in prison, with 28 months suspended.^[18] Since his first sex abuse conviction in June 2006, which resulted in a suspended prison sentence, McNamara received three additional convictions and sentences on sex abuse charges, but was able to once again receive a suspended prison sentence following another conviction in December 2016.^[18]

Marist Brother Claudius Pettit, real name Malcolm Thomas Petit, was convicted of child-sex abuse of a boy at a Wellington school in the 1990s.^[19] In 2005, John Louis Stevenson (known as Brother Bernard) and Brother Andrew Cody of the Hato Paora Māori Boys school in Feilding were convicted of sexual offenses and jailed.^[20][21] A Br. Aiden Benefield (Napier) was convicted of possessing child pornography in 2007.^[22]

Subsequently, in 2020, Kevin Healy (Brother Gordon) was convicted of four charges of indecency (from 1976 to 1977) between a man and boys aged 12 and 13, and one of indecency with a girl aged under 12.^[23]

Another was Ray Gannaway, known as Brother Ivan, who taught in Wellington and Auckland.^[24]