NSW Court Pauses Christian Brothers Abuse Cases to Allow Property Sales for Creditors

The NSW Supreme Court last week ordered a moratorium on current and future child sexual abuse cases against the Christian Brothers. The order gives survivors time to consider a proposed scheme to sell the order's 36 remaining properties and divide proceeds among creditors including survivors.

The Christian Brothers declared last month that it was about to go broke and could no longer afford to meet survivors' claims in court.

Land title records show the order spent the past decade transferring multimillion-dollar homes, land and school buildings to Edmund Rice Education Australia for $1 each. Christian Brothers properties have housed convicted offenders including Brother Rex Elmer and Brother Peter Toomey.

Toomey was convicted in November 2005 of 10 charges of indecent assault against students at Trinity College in Brunswick in the 1970s and jailed again in 2019 for assaults on two boys aged 14 and 15.

The royal commission found the order became aware of complaints against Toomey early in his career yet allowed him to remain in its schools until the end of 2000. In 1973 senior officials were warned of an indiscretion by Toomey with a boy. Within two years they were told he was too familiar in his touching of boys.

Toomey was moved among Parkville, Forest Hill and Cathedral College schools and later sent to Kearney College at Bindoon in 1990. He admitted another indiscretion in 1994 and remained in teaching positions at three schools until the end of 2000 despite a further complaint in August 2000.

Elmer was convicted of abusing children at St Vincent's Boys Home in the 1970s and has been sentenced to jail on three occasions, most recently in 2021.