The whitewash
The Marists hailed them as visionaries, inspiring, great tōtara trees – but they were known child sexual abusers. Can the organisation really claim to have changed if it still celebrates its criminals? Steve Kilgallon reports.
May 3, 2019. The Royal Commission into Abuse in State Care has been announced – and part of its investigation will be the Catholic Church. In a public show that it has changed, and is sorry, the church has welcomed the news.
Under the vaulted ceilings of Sacred Heart church in Vermont St, Ponsonby, in the heart of the church’s rich innercity Auckland land holdings, a clutch of senior clergy gather, huddling in the car park to gossip beside a black hearse.
The occasion is the funeral of Marist Fathers priest Tom Laffey, who died at the age of 86.
Among those present are three bishops and senior Marists, including their then leader, David Kennerley. Also there is survivors’ advocate Murray Heasley, who records the entire ‘‘nauseating’’ ceremony on his GoPro. It records Kennerley asking: ‘‘May we imitate the faithful spirit Tom demonstrated.’’
It also records Marist Father Brian Wysocki’s warm address about his friend, in which he thanks Laffey for ‘‘the good you did for so many in your life’’, before touching briefly on an uncomfortable topic.
‘‘An accusation emerged linked to an incident many years previously,’’ Wysocki says. ‘‘All of this had a devastating effect on him [Laffey], he withdrew into himself and ceased ministry . . . Tom was profoundly sad.’’
He thanked those who stood by Laffey at that time.
But they weren’t simply accusations. Tom Laffey was a confessed paedophile. He admitted sexually assaulting a 13-year-old altar boy in the 1960s. The altar boy, Mike Phillips, went public about the abuse when he was terminally ill. Laffey admitted to it in 2003 and retired from the priesthood.
The Society of Mary paid Phillips $10,000 and apologised, but denied telling him there were four other victims of Laffey.
In August 2017, the Auckland diocese held a mass to celebrate long service by 14 priests – among them Laffey, who was marking 60 years. The New Zealand Catholic newspaper included his name in an online report; but some time since 2018, Laffey’s name has been quietly redacted.
Marist Fathers leader Tim Duckworth said, in a statement, that Laffey was stood down once the complaint was made; the complaint was upheld and ‘‘the complainant supported’’.
He says the funeral followed ‘‘established rituals’’, including asking ‘‘forgiveness for sin, commending him to God’s mercy and allowing family and those who care for him the chance to mourn’’.
He said ‘‘most, if not all, who attended the funeral knew of his offence and would have recognised it was acknowledged in the comment given in the eulogy. Many people today see a funeral as a chance to laud the life of the deceased. For Catholics it is primarily to pray for the deceased.’’
The veneration of Laffey isn’t the only example of the record being whitewashed when a paedophile Marist dies.
When former Sacred Heart and Xavier College principal Ken ‘‘Bosco’’ Camden died in 2014, Marist Brothers nationwide, including the then district leader, Dave McDonald, turned out to his funeral in Napier.
No mention was made of Camden’s jailing for eight months after admitting indecencies against two boys.
Senior Marist Brother Richard Dunleavy – for many years the man who dealt with sexual offending by his colleagues – gave a eulogy which lauded a ‘‘visionary’’ with ‘‘energy, simplicity and humility’’ who had ‘‘very significant gifts and talents’’.
A survivor of Camden, molested by him at Sacred Heart, says it was ‘‘incredibly disrespectful’’.
‘‘They knew he was guilty when they did that. He was buried with full honours, like a religious state funeral, and he’s a kiddy fiddler. He should be disinterred, and his ashes flushed down the toilet.’’
Ayear later, in 2015, the Marist Brothers announced the death of 80-year-old Claudius Pettit, who had been jailed for a year for indecent assaults, by declaring: ‘‘A tō tara tree has fallen in the great forest of Tā ne.’’
Grant West, who says he was raped multiple times as a child by Pettit, says: ‘‘He didn’t give a s .... ’’ He says his obituary showed the Marists don’t care about survivors: ‘‘They just care about covering their arses.’’
Marist Brothers delegate Peter Horide says they ‘‘believe and respect the truth’’ but ‘‘alongside that there’s also the honourable tradition of . . . deeply respecting those who are deceased’’.
Horide says the Brothers nowadays ‘‘acknowledge past truths and realities’’.
Theologian and survivor Christopher Longhurst, leader of SNAP (Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests), says the Marists’ explanations run counter to the church’s own catechism, which says ‘‘adulation is a grave fault if it makes one an accomplice in another’s vices or grave sins’’.
Another example is the curious case of Marist Fathers leader Tim Duckworth’s involvement with Peter Hercock, a diocesan (regular) priest who was jailed for six years, seven months after admitting sexual offences against four women.
Duckworth investigated Hercock when one of his survivors, Anne-Marie Shelley, complained in 2003. He then provided a character reference at his 2014 trial.
It said Hercock ‘‘was not the same naive young man who committed these crimes today’’; that it had been ‘‘madness’’ to place a young priest as counsellor in a girls’ school; and that Duckworth had ‘‘met women who would say Peter Hercock helped them in their teenage years’’.
Duckworth said he also made it clear that Hercock’s behaviour was inexcusable and criminal and he ‘‘significantly helped’’ Shelley by persuading Hercock to plead guilty. Shelley, rejects that: she was left with a feeling of ‘‘deep betrayal’’.
A change for the better?
Catholic Church statistics released last month show the majority of New Zealand sexual complaints relate to offending in the 1960s and 1970s, and drop away from 1990. That tallies with international research from the John Jay Institute in New York, contracted by the worldwide church to track offending data.
Does that mean the church – and its constituent orders, like the Marist Brothers and Fathers