MSC Report Card

The MSC higher-ups that directed the NT Aboriginal program in the 70s-80s were:

Bishop John O'Loughlin (NT diocese)

Father Malcolm Fyfe, Provincial Superior, Director of Catholic Education, Vicar for Missions

 

Given their main roles were to direct the education of First Nations children, let's flip-the-script and assess their report cards for the period they were in charge.

 

Report of the Northern Territory Board of Inquiry into the Protection of Aboriginal Children from Sexual Abuse, 2007:

• involves both female and male victims - from the very young to adulthood

• is committed by non-Aboriginal and Aboriginal males of all ages – with a proportion (polite for a lot) of assaults being committed by offenders who are themselves children

• has led to inter-generational cycles of offending – such that victims have subsequently become offenders and, in turn, created a further generation of victims and offenders. (P59)

Ohr, that sounds: not good so far - as a report card.

 

NT Report: (T)he Inquiry accepts that sexual abuse of Aboriginal children is common, widespread and grossly under-reported .. abuse is rife. p17

 

Hell! Like Hell-on-earth-style. For the subject of Protection of those Under-your-care,care, i’m sorry John & Malcolm, i gotta give you … : F

 

If i was your father, Reverend Fathers, i’d scold you. Don’t worry - you won’t have to drop your daks - in case you’re wondering …

 

With combined roles of Bishop/Director of Catholic Education/Vicar for Missions/Religious Superior,Superiors, you two were, in effect, Australia’s Experts-in-Chief at the coal-face of Aboriginal Affairs in the 70’s-80’s. The executive power. The NT was yourO'Loughlin's Fyfe-dom.

 

O’Loughlin’s/Fyfe's reign was marked by a peak-dismissiveness of other cultures - meanwhile back at The Ranch (nameMSC's nickname for MSC'sthe NT homehome-away-from-mission-life for religious staff)staff, but my meaning is wider), you were covering-up the perversities of your own culture like there was no tomorrow … NoWhich tomorrowthere wasn't for the innocent victims, anywaychild-victims - or not the tomorrow that was taken away from them.them, anyway.

 

MSC's reign in the NT amounts to hegemony,hegemony, basically, full-fledged. Anyone questioning their superior wisdom - they saw that as information to be stamped out - going forward … or backwards … to be replaced with the Sacred Heart of Jesus. There was dissent towards these policies, from real MSC missionary actors at the real-real-coal-face, living amongst the communities. They were ignored. Shut-down. The big-picture decisions were still made by the higher-ups.

 

Bottom-line:

 

Charged with transitioning/assimilating First Nations People to the Western/Catholic way of thinking, the end legacy was:

 

an entrenched culture of child-sexual-abuse

 

The report emphasizes the prevalence of anal rape - & that: many sexual offenders were, in fact, children themselves.themselves. That’s the community atmosphere MSC created for these stolen kiddies, a culture of normalized sexual violence. With a lot of anal rape.rape. Good job Malcolm & John. That's on your watch.

 

It’s way more nuanced than that, of course, we'll explore that later. In short: The missionaries were trainee priests doing their 2-years national service.MSC service. Upon completion, most choose the cushier school/parish/admin appointments, a rare few decide to stick with it. Of the stick-with-its,its, which takes a certain type, all of them, including Leary, Burke, Pat Dodson (who we will look at in detail), conflicted with the MSC higher-ups - namely Fyfe/O’Loughlin - who overruled them.

 

Naturally, Fyfe (who is still alive) will say:say when presented with this report card: Oh, i had no idea! Really? but the NT Report reports that the abuse was so rife that it leaves little room for Fyfe, who had previous form in covering up sexual abuse at Monivae College, Victoria, to again plead ignorance:ignorance.

 

NT Report Card: The person (victim/survivor) said that Aboriginal law had started breaking down at the time she was abused and had now deteriorated to such an extent that young children in the community were sexually abusing one another.

 

So you’ve broken down one culture, replaced it with yours, it’s resulted in (stolen) young children sexually abusing one another …

 

What on God’s earth was going on in those top-end missions you were running, John & Malcolm?

 

To get a clearer idea we can refer to Father Tony Caruana, MSC, who did a one month relief stint at the Daly River mission in the early 80’s on his way back from Papua New Guinea. This is around the time Fyfe was in charge of the Daly River mission - all the missions for that matter. O'Loughlin was a fixture as Bishop.

 

(note: Bishop as a piece in chess was also a Catholic culture-power-play - it used to be an Elephant in the original Indian game, but THE Church saw a re-branding opportunity in the mid 1200s, gave the piece some more power while it was at it. Not as momentous as the BC/AD coup a few hundred years later, but helped set the tone for the Catholicisization of human thinking.)

 

Father Caruana was interviewed for a thesis titled For the Love of God on MSC’s NT mission work. HisCaruana's observations, as an outsider, ring alarm bells …

 

For the Love of God (Beresford-Maning):

 

Tony Caruana .. was singularly unimpressed when he was welcomed to Daly River by a group of young girls who volunteered to ‘come home with you, Father, and look after you and give you anything you might want’.

When Father Caruana declared that he would look after himself the offer was repeated, and again rejected. The girls were clearly affronted and thereafter he was ignored by the greater part of the community for the duration of his stay. Father Caruana’s refusal of their offer was based on his understanding that the girls were offering sexual favours rather than housework. (p210) (author conversation with Caruana)

 

Was reading this the first time, thought to myself: guess they picked the gay-one! - then thought: no, don’t be flippant - maybe Caruana, was the one MSC with a conscience who was genuinely appalled by this off-the-rails sexualized culture happening at the missions …

Let's see ...