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A religious order flew a paedophile out of Australia and he worked as a headmaster in another country, while wanted by police, a royal commission has heard.
Australia’s Royal Commission into Institutional Responses into Child Sexual Abuse is holding hearings in Canberra.
It has heard about failures by the Marist Brothers to act on repeated warnings against former brother Gregory Sutton and Br John Chute.
The pair are collectively suspected of molesting 69 victims at schools between 1960 and 1991.
A lawyer assisting the commission said Sutton was “sent for counselling” to the Southdown Institute for sex offenders in Ontario, Canada.
Although New South Wales Police issued 24 arrest warrants for Sutton between 1992 and 1993, he left the institution in 1992 and worked as headmaster of a Catholic school in St Louis, Missouri, between 1994 and 1996.
The commission is examining “what assistance, if any” the Marist Brothers provided in extraditing Sutton back to New South Wales, where he was eventually sentenced to 18 years jail.
The commission heard Sutton admitted paedophilia to the order’s then-head, Alexis Turton, in 1989.
This was after Sutton received a “tip off” from a family that two teenage girls had reported him to police.
A long-standing suppression order keeping Sutton’s identity secret was lifted after an application from the commission.
One of Chute’s victims, Damian De Marco, also testified before the commission.
He said his complaints to the brothers about his abuse and the fact that Chute was abusing others were ignored.
He was also given false assurances that Chute would be kept away from children.
Mr De Marco took strong exception to Church and the Marist Brothers lawyer Peter Gray insinuating that his memory had been affected by past marijuana use.
The witness said he was driven to drug use to cope with the trauma of the abuse.
Mr DeMarco accused the Church of a “sociopathic disregard for the welfare of victims”.
An apology from Chute was read out accepting that DeMarco had always told the truth.
Chute was jailed for two years in 2009.
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