The live-streamed hearings are part of a wider Royal Commission of Inquiry into abuses in state and religious institutions taking place in the Pacific island nation.
An interim report on the investigation, published in December 2020, revealed that as many as 250,000 children and young and vulnerable adults were physically and sexually abused in New Zealand’s state and religious institutions from the 1960s to the early 2000s.
Wednesday marked the first of seven days of hearings into abuse by the Catholic Church, which has been rocked by decades of sex abuse scandals around the world.
The hearing focused on the abuses committed by priests of the San Juan de Dios in three Catholic institutions in the city of Christchurchon the South Island: Marylands School, the neighboring San José Orphanage and the Hebron Trust.
A survivor from Marylands recounted how he endured four years of abuse from brother Bernard McGrath, a child molester.
“After a while, I started to adjust to the sexual things that were going on in Marylands,” Donald Ku said in his testimony. “I was also threatened by Brother McGrath to keep quiet about what was going on. He once took me to the hospital morgue and showed me a dead body as a way to silence me.“.
“The Church bears deep shame over this dark chapter in its history,” lawyer Sally McKechnie, who represents New Zealand’s bishops and church leaders, told the commission.
The Catholic Church acknowledged in its statement that McGrath is one of the worst sex offenders against children. from Australasian. He is currently serving a 33-year prison sentence in Australia after being convicted of 64 crimes against 12 children in that country.
Of Marylands 42 priests, 21 had allegations of abuse. A total of 537 children, many with disabilities, attended the institution and 144 reported abuse, although this was the “tip of the iceberg”, the commission was told at hearings.
Source: Ambito
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