THE ‘SHUFFLE’
It was called the ‘geographic cure’ – the sudden move to another town of sex-offender priests. It denied one woman justice for almost 30 years, reports Steve Kilgallon in his series on abuse within the Marist Brothers and Fathers.
When Rupene Amato sat with his schoolfriends at lunchtime one day in the early 1980s, they began discussing what happened when they were called for individual ‘‘sex education’’ lessons with the new priest. They all realised it was wrong – and agreed to tell their parents.
Rupene, then 11, was too frightened to tell his mum and dad, worried he would get a hiding for speaking up. But other children did talk. Within a few days, the priest, a Marist Father, had left town. Rupene never saw him again.
‘‘There was no explanation given as to why he left,’’ he recalled to the Royal Commission into Abuse in Care, which is investigating sexual abuse in the church. ‘‘Nobody from school or the church talked to us about it. He was there one day, and gone the next.’’
They call it the ‘‘geographic cure’’ or the ‘‘shuffle’’. The Catholic Church worldwide had a way to deal with sex offenders: to move them. It’s the church’s universal playbook, says Catholic sexual abuse expert Father Tom Doyle. ‘‘It was used everywhere,’’ he says. ‘‘It was the default.’’
The Marist Brothers and Fathers had a major influence on New Zealand society as the largest provider of a Catholic education (about 9% of Kiwis are Catholic-educated) – which also gave abusers among their ranks great access to children. The church’s own statistics, widely acknowledged as a significant undercount, say 12% of Brothers and 6% of Fathers were abusers.
Both groups regularly moved their members around New Zealand to fulfil their teaching duties. At their peak, the Brothers supplied 287 teachers to schools nationwide.
In 1978, two of those men were Kevin Peter Healy, known as Brother Gordon, and Michael George Beaumont. Both were both posted to St Joseph’s College for Boys (now Chanel College) in Masterton.
The Thompson* family were the cornerstone of the nearby St Patrick’s parish.
Anna Thompson’s* parents served on the school board and parish council, and her father helped repair the school and worked for the bishop. They ran prayer groups at home. ‘‘We weren’t just Sunday Catholics, it was our way of life,’’ says Anna.
It was at those home prayer groups that 7-year-old Anna was assaulted. Beaumont abused her during a prayer session after dinner, where the family said the rosary – a
Catholic prayer cycle which takes at least half an hour to complete. Beaumont sat next to her, and as the others closed their eyes in prayer, molested her. She was petrified and ran from the room afterwards.
Healy, meanwhile, came into her bedroom, insisting on a goodnight kiss; it was, she said, ‘‘revolting . . . I felt disgusted’’.
Her father, Barry*, recalled seeing Beaumont’s hand on his daughter’s leg and feeling ‘‘uncomfortable’’ when both men visited Anna’s bedroom. He knew both Healy and Beaumont had reputations within Masterton’s Catholic community.
In a statement to police years later, Barry said he’d spoken to other prayer-group parents concerned about Beaumont’s ‘‘over-familiarity
. . . with other children, and especially young girls. We discussed it and concluded that he had a problem in ‘that’ area’’.
They asked Beaumont to resign from the group and the youth choir, and seek help. ‘‘We never used words like paedophilia in those days, but that is the problem we were referring to when talking to him.’’
Healy, meanwhile, was known as ‘‘touchy-feely and creepy . . . it was common knowledge Brother Gordon liked the boys at that time’’.
Anna, likewise, recalls her mother’s response when she told her about Healy’s assault: ‘‘Oh, I thought he was one for the boys.’’
She says parents knew of an incident involving Healy on a school camp, an assault witnessed by Thompson’s brother (offending which Healy later admitted). ‘‘The conversations were quite open about Kevin Healy being a bloody perve and a creep,’’ Anna says. ‘‘All the parents knew about Kevin Healy.’’
Barry Thompson approached the parish priest, Father Pettit (the brother of a convicted paedophile, Marist Brother Claudius Pettit), and asked him to inform the school principal, Carl Tapp, who was also a senior Marist Brother.
Beaumont and Healy swiftly left town. ‘‘I assumed the matter would be addressed by the appropriate bodies and life went on,’’ wrote Barry.
It’s unclear if formal action was taken in either case; the Marist Brothers have declined to discuss individual cases with Stuff.
But Healy was actually promoted: in 1979 he was appointed head teacher and form 2 master of Marist Intermediate in Miramar, Wellington.
‘‘So a year later, they’ve just moved him [Healy] over the hill, so he can carry on his merry way,’’ says Graham Rush*.
Graham, then aged 11, was in Healy’s form class. Graham had a violent, alcoholic father who frequently beat him. ‘‘Kevin Healy must have picked up pretty quickly on the dysfunctionality,’’ he thinks. ‘‘He made a beeline for me. He picked me out. It [abuse] became an everyday occurrence.’’
The episode that looms most vividly in Graham’s memory came after a compulsory swimming lesson. Graham hadn’t wanted to swim that day – he was covered in bruises from another beating and couldn’t face the embarrassment of classmates seeing his body.
Afterwards, he says, ‘‘I was in the changing room, togs on, I was in tears, all my mates had seen me,’’ and Healy arrived, and told him to stay behind.
Healy, he says, would also turn up at home to see his mother, and Graham and his older brother would plead for
her not to allow him inside: ‘‘She didn’t know what to believe.’’
The abuse continued into Graham’s form 2 year. He told his mother, a Catholic social worker and his Police Youth Aid worker, but none of them believed him: ‘‘They [the Brothers] were next to God, and I was off the rails . . . I started rebelling.’’
Healy’s response was to tell a child psychologist that Graham should be sent to the notorious Epuni Boys’ Home, in Lower Hutt, since exposed as a deeply violent and abusive institution.
Graham says he’s seen the notation in his files, having requested to view them last year. He’s convinced it was to cover Healy’s tracks.
After Epuni, he was placed as a boarder at the same school where Healy taught when he abused Anna Thompson*. ‘‘I then put my middle finger up to society. It led to a life where, looking back, I had a lot of fun, but I was always in trouble with the police and in bad relationships.’’
Desperate to break the cycle and end his skirmishes with the law, Graham took non-violence courses, had psychological counselling and forgave his father in an effort to change and be a good parent. But not until he saw a Stuff story three years ago about Healy’s offending did he finally realise what was wrong.
‘‘I saw that picture and I remembered his gold watch with the elastic gold strap, and how hairy the back of his hands were. I had put up a mental block . . . and I think that was the reason I kept selfdestructing. I’m lucky I saw that picture . . . otherwise I would still be in that hole.’’
Graham is angry that Healy was simply moved. ‘‘They knew about him. They knew what he was doing in the Wairarapa. And they just threw him over the hill to Wellington.
‘‘They just got moved on, take you out of that community and go wreck another, and there’s no accountability.’’
Healy, now aged 82 and no longer a Marist Brother, was convicted last year on representative charges of indecent assault against three boys (one of them Graham) during his three years at Miramar. He served six months’ home detention.
In 2020, Healy was also convicted of five indecent assault charges on four boys and one girl – Anna Thompson* – during his time in Wairarapa, ordered to serve nine months’ home detention and placed on the sex offenders’ register.
He’d earlier argued he shouldn’t face a trial because of his age. He’s declined previous requests for comment.
Michael Beaumont also kept teaching after his hasty exit from Masterton. In 1988, he was at Auckland’s Marcellin College, where he was accused of molesting a girl on a school camp. Her parents complained to the principal, Brother Roger Dowling. They said he first told them that, because it happened on camp, it wasn’t his responsibility, and later that he found the situation difficult to deal with.
The parents were given a promise that Beaumont would leave, but he remained at the school the following year, so they removed their daughter. They subsequently complained to the Marist Brothers.
Dowling, now in a retirement home, denied that version of events, saying a ‘‘stupid incident on Michael’s part was blown up . . . there’s a difference between doing something and having it proved. There was nothing proved.’’
He said Beaumont left the school of his own choice. He said he was never told of his previous offending: ‘‘No, not at all. You are the first one who has.’’
In 2018, Beaumont was charged for the assaults on Anna Thompson* and two 12-year-old girls, also in the 1970s. When he was arrested at his Auckland home, police found violent, paedophilic, fantasy writing on a USB stick.
Beaumont was then working part-time for the Catholic Institute of Aotearoa New Zealand (TCI) and part-time for the Auckland Catholic diocese. Among his duties was answering calls to a family violence helpline.
Stuff has learnt that TCI staff were invited to pray for Beaumont on the eve of his trial.
Beaumont was convicted and sentenced to a year’s home detention. He now lives with his wife in south Auckland. Attempts to contact him for comment were unsuccessful.
It’s not unusual that two abusers such as Beaumont and Healy were together in one small town. Stuff has other examples of the continued centrifugal movement of priests and brothers creating paedophile clusters.
In a justice honours degree thesis, Queensland University of Technology academic Sally Mujytens explored the possibility that paedophile ‘‘dark networks’’ operated within Victoria’s
Catholic Church, creating an organised, self protecting network, facilitated by a
‘‘grey’’ network of nonabusive but enabling clergy.
It’s clear some offenders changed location more frequently than other priests and brothers.
Between 1932 and 1960, Brother Fabian O’Driscoll, who died in 2006, relocated 10 times. He has since faced multiple credible abuse allegations.
One of his survivors is Christopher Longhurst, leader of the New Zealand chapter of SNAP (Support Network of those Abused by Priests).
Longhurst, abused by O’Driscoll in 1980, aged 11, at Napier’s Sacred Heart College, asks: ‘‘Why was he being transferred so quickly? I suspect it is because they knew.’’
Longhurst, given just $15,000 for O’Driscoll’s abuse, believes five complaints have been laid posthumously against O’Driscoll, and knows of a dozen abused by him. Stuff has talked to two more abused by O’Driscoll in Whanganui, during his posting there from 1960 to 1965.
Whanganui was a hotbed of paedophilia at that time. O’Driscoll taught at the city’s Marist Brothers primary alongside Brothers Claudius Pettit and Ivan ‘‘Brother Benedict’’ Bulled.
The principal of the neighbouring high school, St Augustine’s (now Cullinane College), was Marist Father Phil Roberts. All four are dead but have credible allegations against them (Pettit was also convicted).
‘‘My classmates didn’t deserve that,’’ says Jim Clifford*, who was abused by O’Driscoll at the age of 12, while his brother, Gordon*, was abused by Bulled.
Was it coincidence or planning that drew these men together in the same place, and then had those who faced allegations moved elsewhere?
The Marist groups say the movement of offenders was incidental, part of a regular rotation driven by mundane reasons such as health and family needs and teaching requirements.
In a statement, Marist Fathers leader Tim Duckworth said: ‘‘Records . . . do not support that the moves of those named were because complaints of sexual abuse against them had come to light.’’
Duckworth said offenders’ promises to reform were ‘‘highly unlikely to be followed through’’ and he didn’t believe recidivism was well understood in the past. ‘‘In these situations a geographical cure never works. Today if a member of the Society has a complaint of sexual abuse upheld against him, he’s no longer permitted to continue in ministry.’’
Marist Brothers delegate Peter Horide said there was no evidence that, since 1990, any Brother had been moved to avoid the consequences of abuse or allegations. He refused to comment specifically on Healy or Beaumont.
Before 1990, he said, records weren’t good
enough to confirm reasons for a Brother’s movement. ‘‘If we were to learn that it was known that a Brother was a predatory abuser and that he was moved by his religious superiors because of a complaint, and that he was put in a position to cause further harm, this would be a hugely devastating, awful and appalling revelation.’’