Marist Brother jailed for child abuse is still a member, commission hears
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Version 0 of 1. A man jailed for six years for abusing children is still a member of the Marist Brothers, the royal commission into child abuse has been told. Brother Alexis Turton, the former head of the order in Australia and head of their professional standards office until 2012, told the hearing in Sydney that John Chute, known as Brother Kosta, was still a member. Peter O'Brien, the solicitor representing Damian De Marco, who was assaulted by Chute when he was a student at Marist College in Canberra, on Monday asked Turton if he was aware of any moves to “defrock [Chute] as a brother”. Turton said he had no knowledge if moves were afoot to remove Chute from the brotherhood. He said he had seen Chute's medical records and “his state of health is not good”. He has dementia and does not live with the brothers. Turton, who has already given two days’ evidence when the royal commission sat in Canberra, is answering questions about how he and the order handled the cases of two brothers – Chute and John Sutton – who were both jailed for molesting children. Chute was sentenced to six years in 2008 after pleading guilty to assaulting 19 children. The commission heard he first offended in 1959 and was given a canonical warning in 1968 after admissions of repeated child sex abuse offences. O'Brien also accused Turton of giving "hopelessly inconsistent" evidence about a meeting he had with De Marco in Canberra airport in 1993. De Marco had reported that Kosta had tried to put his hands down his pants and touch his genitals when he was at Marist College in Canberra. Turton's subsequent notes said there was "nothing genital" involved in Kosta's dealings with De Marco. He told O'Brien on Monday that "what I can be quite certain about is the notes I took at the time". O'Brien asked if, when he was professional standards officer, it was his role to "conceal rather than expose" abuse. Turton: "That was not my role." When asked if he saw his role as being primarily to protect the reputation of the brothers above all else, he replied: "Far from it." |