"Stay over there and live your life,"
Posted: Tue Jul 01, 2014 5:04 am
US / Canadian residents may not want him....
A Marist Brothers school teacher who repeatedly sexually abused children was tipped off to a police investigation by the head of the order in Australia, who then sent him overseas and, when a warrant for his arrest was issued, told him to "stay over there and live your new life".
The allegations came from the convicted paedophile himself - Gregory Sutton - who has taken the highly unusual step of giving evidence at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in Sydney.
Sutton was jailed for 67 child-sex offences against 15 children. Most of the offences occurred while he worked at various Marist Brothers primary schools in NSW and Canberra.
He is one of two brothers whose actions are the focus of the commission's hearings.
Sutton told the commission on Tuesday that, in August 1989, he was called in for a meeting with the then head (or provincial) of the Marist Brothers in Australia, Brother Alexis Turton, and told that he was being investigated over his abuse of children at a school in Campbelltown.
Within four days of that meeting, Sutton said, he was put on a plane to the US. He then travelled to Canada for an "assessment" and "treatment" for his behaviour, at a Catholic Church institution known as Southdown.
"He informed me that there was a police investigation into my offending at Campbelltown," Sutton said of the meeting.
"Was this the first time you had heard that such an investigation was under way?" counsel assisting the commission, Gail Furness, SC, asked Sutton.
"Yes," he replied.
Sutton said Brother Turton arranged for his plane ticket to fly to Chicago from where he travelled to Ontario, where the "assessment" took place.
"Did it seem sudden to you?" Ms Furness asked Sutton of the hastily arranged trip.
"It seemed extremely sudden," Sutton replied.
The commission heard that Sutton continued to live in the US after his "treatment" in Canada, taking up a job as an administrative officer at a grade school in the city of St Louis.
Sutton said that, in 1992, Brother Turton rang him in St Louis and informed him that a warrant had been issued for his arrest by a court in Lismore.
"I asked him what I should do," Sutton told the commission.
"And do you remember what he told you?" Ms Furness asked.
"Yes, he said 'stay over there and live your life'," Sutton replied.
Sutton was arrested in the US in August 1995 and extradited to Australia in April 1996.
He pleaded guilty to 67 child-sex charges and was sentenced to a maximum of 15 years in jail with a minimum of 12 years. He was released in April 2008.
He is due to continue giving evidence this afternoon.
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/marist-brothe ... z36BqgtuaT
