Catholic suspected paedophiles allowed to continue teaching, despite complaints

May 17 2016

• Christopher Knaus

From the Link: http://www.canberratimes.com.au/act-news/catholic-suspected-paedophiles-allowed-to-continue-teaching-despite-complaints-20160517-goxam5.html

Marist Brother Francis William Cable

Catholic officials knowingly allowed two suspected paedophiles, including one of NSW’s worst, to continue teaching unpunished, eventually putting St Edmund’s College students at risk for a decade.

One cover-up involved a Marist Brothers principal in Sydney, who was aware that now-notorious child predator Brother Francis “Romuald” Cable was abusing boys, but failed to report him to police.

Cable instead went to Newcastle, where he molested another 11 children before leaving the order to teach at St Edmund’s between 1979 and 1989.

Fairfax Media has also established that the Christian Brothers, who then ran St Edmund’s, became aware of a complaint against one of their NSW brothers, but sent him to Canberra regardless, allowing him to allegedly abuse another boy.

The Christian Brothers concede their past handling of such cases was flawed and that “what happened 25 years ago is not what the community or we would accept today”.

The Marist Brothers say the Sydney principal never reported Cable’s abuse to his superiors, and that the order’s leadership did not become aware of any complaint until 1993, when his teaching career was over.

Francis ‘Romuald’ Cable

Cable hunted boys with an unnerving depravity and audacity before he moved to the ACT, molesting or raping at least 19 students at three Marist schools in the 1960s and 1970s.

Labelled one of NSW’s worst Catholic school paedophiles, he twisted religious doctrine and used his authority to manipulate victims, many of whom were troubled or from broken families.

He molested boys in his office, on excursions, behind his desk as fellow students sat nearby, and at the local swimming pool.

“You won’t say anything to anyone,” he told one boy. “You are not Catholic and have the mark of the devil on you.”

The same child was later beaten mid-rape to stop him screaming out in pain.

Afterwards, the boy asked Cable “what have you done to me?”, prompting the brother to hit him again, tell him to “remember our little secret”, and bless him in Latin.

Cable’s crimes were only recently reported publicly. He was sentenced last year to 16 years in jail for abusing 19 students over 15 years. Now 84 and frail, he is likely to die before he is eligible for release.

There is no evidence Cable abused children at St Edmund’s.

However, Fairfax Media can reveal that Cable could have been stopped 12 years before he even arrived in the ACT.

A principal at a Marist school in Sydney, St Gabriel’s in Pagewood, was told Cable was abusing boys as early as 1967.

One victim told police in 2013 that the principal came to his parents’ home, asked him whether he had been touched indecently, and then assured him and his father that Cable had been “spoken to” and would be moved.

The principal failed to report the allegations to the police, and Cable was sent to a school in Newcastle, where he abused a further 11 boys over the next eight years.

Strangely, a detailed, official history of the Marists’ Hunter Valley schools, published in 1998, omits any reference to Cable, despite his decade of service there.

But the Marists say the St Gabriel’s principal never took the matter to the order’s leadership when he learned Cable was abusing children in 1967.

“In saying that, in no way do we contradict the witness statement made in 2013 in relation to events in 1967, and we accept the witness may have told the principal at that time,” Marist Brothers Australia said in a statement.

“However no record, statement or summary of that allegation was ever forwarded by the principal to the Marist Brothers.”

The Marist Brothers said they first received a complaint about Cable in 1993, well after he had finished teaching but decades before police began investigating him. They had no cause for concern when Cable left the brotherhood and moved to Canberra.

The Marists also said the 1993 complaint could explain why Cable was not mentioned in the history of Hunter Valley schools published five years later.

“It is possible that his name was deliberately omitted to spare victims unnecessary discomfort.”

The Christian Brothers, who then ran the ACT college, say they immediately searched their records mid-last year after learning of his prior abuse in NSW, but found no complaints.

“We strongly urge The Canberra Times or any person who may hold any evidence of criminal conduct at the school to refer that to the police for the proper investigation,” the brothers said in a statement.

Cable was a lay teacher at the college, swapping his first name Francis for “Rom”, an abbreviation of the saintly moniker he took as a Marist brother.

Fairfax tracked down 10 of Cable’s St Edmund’s colleagues from the 1980s and told them of his history.

Many were shocked, saying they knew nothing of his past abuse nor of any complaint about him while he taught in Canberra. Several said the headmaster at the time would not have hired Cable had he known.

One clearly remembered Cable for his “ridiculous” contempt for the children. “He just had that real sense of hatred that kind of shocked me.”

Do you know more? email christopher.knaus@fairfaxmedia.com.au

Roughly 20 of Cable’s ex-students from St Edmund’s were also found. Some described him as a cruel man, who picked on children and appeared to enjoy corporal punishment, while others said he was an unremarkable teacher who had not caused problems.

“My experience with him was horrible. He was not a nice person,” one said.

It is understood ACT police have not received complaints about Cable’s time at St Edmund’s.

But clergy-abuse survivors have expressed concerns about his decade here.

Bob O’Toole is a co-founder of the Clergy Abused Network. He was abused by another Marist teacher, Brother Leon Mackey, at the same Newcastle school where Cable preyed on children.

Mr O’Toole said Cable’s move away from the Marists would be unlikely to have changed his behaviour.

“I’d be extremely surprised. These people don’t just get to 1979 and suddenly stop.”

The NSW Christian Brother

A second brother was also sent to St Edmund’s in disturbing circumstances.

The man, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, was teaching at Christian Brothers schools in NSW before he came to the ACT in 1978.

A child-abuse allegation had been made against him in NSW. Despite being aware of that complaint, the Christian Brothers allowed him to move to St Edmund’s to teach until 1983.

“We acknowledge that this appears to have occurred notwithstanding a previous complaint that resulted in the later settlement of a civil claim,” the order said in a statement.

He was then accused of abusing a boy at St Edmund’s, which also led to a civil claim and settlement.

The brother was then moved out of the ACT, and has since been accused of more child sexual abuse after his time at St Edmund’s.

Those allegations are currently before a court interstate, restricting what the Christian Brothers can say about the brother.

But the order did say its past handling of such cases had been flawed and offered its “unreserved apology” to any student who suffered abuse.

“Sadly, it has been the ongoing learning from our own work and that of the royal commission that poor practices in the past have failed to deliver acceptable outcomes,” it said.

ACT Policing’s child-abuse taskforce, Operation Attest, can be contacted via 131 444. 

Former Marist Brother Francis William Cable, aka Brother Romuald, admits sexual abuse

JOANNE McCARTHY
March 19, 2015, 10 p.m.

From the Link: http://www.theherald.com.au/story/2957438/former-marist-brother-admits-sexual-abuse/

Marist Brother Francis William Cable

A FORMER Hunter Marist Brother who called a 12-year-old student ‘‘the anti-Christ’’ before raping him half a century ago is in custody after pleading guilty to sexually abusing 17 boys and teenagers, and being found guilty of offences against two others.

Trials against Francis William Cable, 82, known as Brother Romuald when he taught at Marist Brothers schools at Hamilton, Maitland and Pagewood in the 1960s, were expected to run for several months after he pleaded not guilty to nearly 60 indecent assault and buggery offences in the 1960s and 1970s.

But he entered guilty pleas to multiple offences in Sydney District Court on Thursday after a jury in the first trial found him guilty of 13 offences against two boys, including buggery, on Tuesday.

Men cried with relief and outrage after the guilty pleas were confirmed. One victim, who was called ‘‘the anti-Christ’’, beaten on the head and digitally and orally raped by Romuald at the age of 12, cried as he said: ‘‘I don’t trust any man.’’

‘‘He was violent. He used me for sex. He was a mongrel of a bloke and I was just a child.’’

Three of his victims who cried while recounting the terror they experienced at school because of Romuald said they had no time for anyone who expressed sympathy for him because of his age, or the likelihood that he would die in jail.

‘‘He sexually abused me more than 50 years ago and I’ve had to live with that for most of my life,’’ said one of his former students, 67.

‘‘He’s been able to live his life without anyone knowing what he did. He probably thought that at 82, ‘I’m fine. I’ll get away with this’, but that’s not right. Child sexual abuse has a devastating impact on your life. It doesn’t matter how old you are, or how old they are, the silence that allowed this to happen has to end.’’

Romuald sexually abused a number of children who had suffered deaths in their families, or where family members were known drinkers, or where the children had physical problems.

He sexually abused children behind his desk in classrooms at Maitland, Hamilton and Pagewood while other students were in the room. He gained access to boys and teenagers outside school by coaching sports, taking them on Duke of Edinburgh Award camps and activities, running army cadet groups, and organising father-and-son weekend camps where the fathers brought kegs of beer.

At one of the father-and-son weekends, Romuald indecently assaulted a 13-year-old boy while they were swimming in Myall Lakes.

An agreed statement of facts tendered to the court said the boy told his father on the trip home.

‘‘His father did not believe him and told him he was lying,’’ the facts said.

Romuald committed multiple offences at Newcastle, Merewether and Maitland baths, and Heffron Park baths in Sydney while swimming with boys and teenagers.

Other offences occurred at Bar Beach, also while swimming.

In 1972 Romuald took a form 2 Hamilton Marist Brothers class to Merewether Baths, where they used the change rooms.

‘‘The offender was walking around in the change rooms with an erection. He was encouraging the boys to remove their clothes, telling them to take their swimmers off,’’ the statement of facts said.

Romuald indecently assaulted boys at the Hamilton and Maitland schools while teaching them sex education, which he taught in one-on-one sessions. He also befriended women who were alone because their husbands had died, or left, or worked for long periods away from home, and indecently assaulted their sons during regular visits.

Romuald indecently assaulted one boy in his mother’s laundry, telling him it was ‘‘sex education’’.

One of his victims, 58, said his life had ‘‘gone completely pear-shaped’’ because of the abuse he experienced at Hamilton Marist Brothers.

‘‘I was going to be an engineer but after the abuse I just couldn’t stay at school. I got out,’’ he said.

‘‘I hate the Marist Brothers. I can’t understand how they did all that stuff. The Brothers at that school were friends of my parents. I look back and see what a mess my life has been and I realise, I was running away.’’

Francis Cable (Brother Romuald) will be sentenced at a later date.

A MAN sobbed on Thursday when told he would not have to give evidence against Francis William Cable, the man he knew as Brother Romuald at Marist Brothers Hamilton.

‘‘I feel cheated,’’ he said, while apologising for not being able to control his sobs.

‘‘I’ve lost my chance to say: ‘You hurt me’. I’m really beaten up. I’ve got to get this bear off my back because it’s been 40 bloody years.’’

The man was 13 when Romuald repeatedly indecently assaulted him in class, and left him terrified  of  when the next incident would occur.

‘‘For all this time, I’ve pictured myself as three feet tall, and he’s six feet four, and I’m powerless. I need to look at his face and know he’s a bent-up old man and he can’t hurt me any more. I need to be able to tell him that: ‘You can’t hurt me any more’.’’

The man, who cannot be identified, said Romuald was a ‘‘big, evil, scary man who used to turn up out of nowhere’’ for many former students.

‘‘There are more victims … who wouldn’t make statements to police. I personally approached four. They said he had abused them but they just couldn’t make a statement. That’s the power this stuff has over you.

‘‘You cap it and seal it away and think you’re OK, and then it hits you.’’

The man said his family had not supported him. When he rang them in distress after the guilty pleas on Thursday, his parents tried to change the subject.

Another victim who was 13 when he was repeatedly assaulted by Romuald said he was staggered by the failings of the Catholic Church and the Marist Brothers to protect children at the Hamilton and Maitland schools.

‘‘Of course I hate the bastards for it.’’

Ex-Marist Brother Romuald, AKA Francis William Cable, jailed 16 years for child sex abuse

JOANNE McCARTHY
June 18, 2015, 11 p.m

From the Link: http://www.theherald.com.au/story/3155128/the-mongrels-gone-paedophile-marist-brother-jailed/

Marist Brother Francis William Cable

FOR more than 15 years Marist Brother Romuald – Francis William Cable – hunted children down and molested them, with what a judge described as ‘‘frankly breathtaking audacity’’.

He left children bloodied.

He terrified them.

But in a Sydney court on Thursday his victims, now men in their late 50s and 60s, cheered as Judge Peter Whitford sentenced Cable, 83, to 16 years’ jail, and he was led away.

‘‘I was bleeding after he raped me one day and he said to me ‘You’ve got the blood of a jackal in you. Your mother must have been a jackal’,’’ said a victim, who cannot be identified, who was 12 when he was brutally raped on a weekly basis for at least a year from 1965.

‘‘I’ve never forgotten it. He said I was Satan because I wasn’t a Catholic. It takes it out of you, having to tell people what happened to you, but it was worth it. He’s gone. The mongrel’s gone.’’

Cable must serve at least eight years’ jail for crimes against 19 former students at Marist Brothers schools at Maitland, Hamilton and Pagewood between 1960 and 1974.

He was found guilty of 13 serious offences against two boys at Maitland and Pagewood after a trial in March.

Cable entered guilty pleas to crimes against 17 other victims several days later.

Judge Whitford said Cable’s ‘‘determined predatory conduct’’ over 15 years represented ‘‘a systematic and flagrant abuse of his position of trust and authority’’ over vulnerable young boys.

The former Marist Brother, who left the order in 1978, smiled on entering the court, and sat unmoved as the judge recounted the shocking detail of his crimes.

Two boys begged him not to rape them in the early 1960s.

The boy who was told he had the blood of a jackal was gagged and ‘‘hit about the head’’ when Romuald forced him to commit oral sex during a school beach excursion in the early 1960s.

Nightmares leave the man ‘‘prowling’’ his garden with knives, an axe and sometimes a machete, because ‘‘I think the Marist Brothers are out there still’’.

Romuald pushed his thumbs into the boy’s eye sockets ‘‘to prevent him from biting’’ during forced oral sex, the court heard.

‘‘The boy begged him not to do anything,’’ Judge Whitford said.

Brother Romuald favoured attacks in the water. Boys were abused at Bar Beach, La Perouse in Sydney, Merewether and Maitland baths and the Myall Lakes, where the Marist Brother put on a keg of beer at father-and-son camps.

He targeted children in families where a parent or relative had died, or fathers were violent or absent, or parents were extremely devout.

Brother Romuald showed ‘‘little concern about being detected and certainly no concern for the welfare, wellbeing and security of the victims’’, Judge Whitford said.

‘‘Many of the offences involved cruelty, which included physical violence on occasions, and at times actual harm.

‘‘It is impossible to believe the offender had any motivation beyond his own sexual gratification.’’

Judge Whitford acknowledged the lifelong consequences the men experienced because of the abuse.

Cable inflicted ‘‘considerable suffering, pain and humiliation on individual victims, not just at the time of the offending, but in the decades since’’.

‘‘All of the victims have demonstrated extraordinary resilience and depth of character in coming forward and giving their accounts of experiences that have had inevitably profound effects on their lives.’’

Judge Whitford described Cable’s crimes as ‘‘abominable’’.

‘‘It’s impossible to conceive that the offender had any motivation beyond his own sexual gratification, which he pursued without any consideration for the childhood, innocence, and future of his victims,’’ Judge Whitford said.  Cable will remain in jail until at least 2023.

JOANNE McCARTHY

TWO men in their 60s sat in a corridor outside a Sydney District courtroom on Thursday and talked about their school days more than 50 years ago.

They exchanged photos of Marist Brothers school at Maitland, and talked about teachers and the friends who had committed suicide.

Then they talked about Brother Romuald.

‘‘He’s as evil now as he was 50 years ago,’’ said one of the men, 66, who was a timid boy, vulnerable and eager to please when Romuald made him a target.

‘‘As far as I’m concerned, he’s Satan. He did anything he liked without any fear of comeback, without any sign of remorse. He just didn’t care. This is not an idle comment – he’s the most evil person I’ve ever known.’’

The second man, also 66, was a talented child with a gift for drawing.

His parents were very strict Catholics who revered priests and thought they could do no wrong.

Brother Romuald was his teacher in 1962.

‘‘He set us a task one day to draw the  ‘Hand of God’ [depicting a reclining, naked male body],’’ the man said.

‘‘I actually did a perfect copy but when he saw it, he called me out, tore it in two and flogged the shit out of me in front of the class.

‘‘He used to do things so that he could flog kids and he took great pleasure out of it.’’

Brother Romuald would sit in an office watching boys play cricket.

‘‘You weren’t supposed to go beyond the line. When enough boys had gone over the line, he would blow the whistle so that everyone had to freeze. Then he’d come down and cane kids. And he was violent.’’

The man who was a timid boy told his wife only two years ago that he had been sexually abused as a child.

‘‘I just put it behind me for all those years, but then there was so much out there about it, it all came flooding back – how vulnerable we were, how young,’’ he said.

‘‘It came up on the news that he’d been charged and I said to my wife: ‘That’s him’.’’

He cheered with other victims and their families after Romuald was sentenced to 16 years’ jail. But outside the court, he cried and hugged his former classmates.