Father Caruana

`

Curious, i search Father Tony Caruana MSC ...  Page 1 results:

ABC: Paedophile priest Anthony William Peter Caruana has been sentenced to 15 years in prison for sexually abusing boys as young as 12 at a NSW school. (Chevalier College, MSC) Caruana was convicted of 26 offences against 12 students.

(He) committed his crimes when he was the school's dormitory master, rugby coach and bandmaster.  .. One of the victims was subjected to abuse of escalating severity after band practice (whereby) Caruana orally and anally raped the student and forced him to engage in sex acts while telling him: "You know God will like it if you please a man of God."

Judge Robyn Tupman: These boys were entrusted to the school and the care of teachers and priests like this offender and he abused that trust by sexually assaulting them.

Each of the offences was committed in circumstances where the offender had a special duty to each of these young boys. These boys were entrusted to the school and the care of teachers and priests like this offender.

ABC: Judge Tupman said all the victims suffered lasting psychological and emotional trauma.

She said Caruana even contacted the mother of one of his victims to tell her about her son's behavioural issues while he was abusing him.

Students who tried to tell their parents and the school about the abuse were not believed.

SMH: She also noted that “a complaint made about his behaviour while he was teaching at Daramalan College in the early 1970s which gave rise to a civil action against him”.

Judge Tupman said there was no further detail before the court on that action, and no indication any criminal proceedings arose as a result. But following the complaint, Caruana spent three years in Papua New Guinea before returning to teach at Australian schools.

Firstly, classic MSC/The Church. Judge Tupman is implying that he was sent to PNG as a result of the complaint at Daramalan, MSC in the early 70s. Without being able to verify that exactly, it fits neatly into MSC/The Church's standard operating procedure (as documented in the RC), that when a complaint about sexual misconduct is received, they immediately go into cover-up mode & start shunting offenders around their parishes.

But to put that aside for the time being, it at least gives us a timeline to work with re Caruana's report on the sexualized nature of children at the Daly River mission.

Sent to PNG for three years, after complaint(s) in the early 70s - that puts him in Daly River for his one month stint (when returning for a break from PNG) in the early to mid 70s. Let's say 1973-75.

(As Brother Burke, who arrived in the NT just before Cyclone Tracy hit on Christmas Eve 1974, noted, 1975 was a very interesting year. (p327)

So to recap this unholy MSC missionary position, what have we got so far?

• a legacy of rampant child sexual abuse - both adult-to-children & children-to-children - who were following the example of the adults - as children do
• Caruana’s welcoming at Daly River was a sexualized event involving young girls - indicating that pedophilia had become normalized at the missions. The girls were clearly affronted when Caruana rebuffed their offers - from which we can deduce they weren’t used to being knocked back by MSC males.  Subsequently, Caruana was ostracized by the community for refusing to participate - indicating an entrenched culture at the mission - not a few rogue girls
• Tony goes off to resume his own brand of sex-crimes at Chevalier College, which he’d allegedly first begun at Daramalan in the early ‘70’s. Which shows the extent to which sexual-perversion had taken root throughout the MSC system - to the point where there were competing types of sexual abusers - something we also saw with Frith/Fyfe reporting on Mamo at Monivae
• around the time this breakdown in morality was happening, Father Malcolm Fyfe & Bishop O'Loughlin were in charge of overseeing the culture at the missions - & ignoring advice from their own missionaries on the front-line

Interestingly, in the case of Beresford-Manning's puff-piece on MSC missionary activity in the NT, she was granted access to the Kensington Archives in Sydney, but banned, by Father Tim Brennan (p419), from accessing the NT archives. Her guide was none other than Father Caruana, who she praised, noting that:

(A)rchivist, Father Tony Caruana MSC, was most helpful in locating material pertaining to Daly River in particular and the Northern Territory in general.

To be fair, she published in 2008, before Caruana's sex crime spree was known to the wider world outside MSC.