Senior Christian Brothers will give evidence to the royal commission into child sex abuse this week. Source: AAP
THE Christian Brothers regarded the physical and sexual abuse of children as abhorrent and a moral failing but not a criminal offence, a royal commission has been told.
The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has also heard double jeopardy laws prevented other men from coming forward to tell of their abuse at the hands of a Brother Dick, who was sentenced to three and a half years after confessing to abusing five "unknown" children.
Allegations of child sex abuse were not passed on to police because the order did not see them as a criminal matter.
"All I can assume, understand, is that there was a mindset that didn't see this first and foremost as a crime; that it was something of a moral failing, contributing to the corruption of the child," Brother Anthony Shanahan, the order's former provincial leader for WA and SA, said on Monday.
"I think they saw it as something that was abhorrent, harmful, although I don't think they understood it as harmful in the way we would now, in terms of consequences for the victim."
The commission last week heard from 11 men physically and sexually abused at four WA Christian Brothers residences at Tardun, Bindoon, Clontarf and Castledare between 1947 and 1968.
Justice McClellan asked Br Shanahan if he thought it extraordinary that the order did not view sex abuse as a criminal offence.
"Yes," he replied.
"Can you explain how the order would have brought themselves intellectually to that position?" Justice McClellan asked.
"No, I can't explain it," Br Shanahan said.
Br Shanahan said there existed a pattern where an accused brother would be transferred.
Christian Brothers who were accused of sexual abuse were still allowed to work with children by being sent to day schools where there would be less opportunity to offend.
"There was a pattern, I think - not completely in 100 per cent of cases, but I think it's a pattern where there was a complaint the person would be transferred to a day school and not a residential school," he said.
When asked by Council assisting the commission Gail Furness if Br Shanahan's predecessors knew of the underlying conduct that led to the transfer, he replied: "Probably, yes."
The commission also heard a series of documented sex abuse allegations dating back to 1919, some against brothers who were shifted to other schools around the country.
Last week an abuse survivor, Edward Delaney, said after he told the superior at Bindoon, Brother Bruno Doyle, of his abuse at the hands of a Brother Parker, he was informed the man had been transferred to Tasmania and was told not to talk about it.
Deputy Director of Public Prosecutions Bruno Fiannaca told the commission the 1994 conviction of Br Dick prohibited others from coming forward in the courts.
The hearings continue.
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