This week, Four Corners turns its attention to the Christian Brothers and the sexual abuse claims facing the Catholic order.
Reporter Louise Milligan investigates the order’s financial crisis and approach to compensation, including questions surrounding the transfer of school properties and the future of its relationship with Edmund Rice Education Australia.
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The Christian Brothers have had more sexual abuse claims made against them than any other Catholic order in Australia.
In June, with more than 300 active sexual abuse claims and facing hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation payouts, the Brothers informed victim-survivors that they were on the brink of insolvency.
Their proposed solution – a creditors’ scheme.
Established in Ireland in the nineteenth century, the order came to Australia and educated children here for more than a century. In 2007, the Brothers set up a separate entity to run their schools and from 2013, they transferredschool properties worth hundreds of millions of dollars to that organisation for a nominal sum, in many instances, one dollar or less.
The recipient, the Trustees of Edmund Rice Education Australia, now runs 61 Christian Brothers schools, educating 44,000 students across the country.
Unsurprisingly, lawyers for victim-survivors turned to Edmund Rice Education Australia to defend claims and pay liabilities on behalf of the failing Christian Brothers.
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In this episode, Four Corners investigates how a religious order operating in countries around the world, with a mission to improve the lives of the poor and marginalised, has adopted strategies to avoid paying compensation to vulnerable victims of child sexual abuse, using tacticsmany say aremore akin to a corporation than a religious institution.
As one victim-survivor told Four Corners:
“In my opinion, they choose money over the victims. And it’s as far away from gospel values as possible”.
In his first television interview since the crisis erupted, the Chair of the Trustees of Edmund Rice Education Australia talks exclusively to Four Corners,giving his account of how and when the schools’ body learned about the Brothers’ precarious financial position, how they will respond to victim-survivors of sexual abuse, and the future of their relationship with the religious order.
And while the legal machinations continue, victim-survivors with unresolved claims against the order and those who have already settled with the Brothers, are in limbo.
Four Corners: Christian Brothers Inc. airs tonight, Monday 7 September at 8.30pm on ABC and ABC iview.
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