More victims of historic sex abuse by De La Salle brothers in Malvern come forward

Calls for victims of abuse by paedophile Brother Anselm at an elite Catholic boys’ school in Malvern have spurred accusations of sex offending by other clerics at the school.

Michael Gravener, now 57, told the Leader he was 11 when a De La Salle brother began abusing him.

Calls for witnesses and survivors of abuse by paedophile Brother Anselm at De La Salle College in Malvern have resulted in revelations of abuse by other clerics at the school.

After the Leader revealed last week Porters Lawyers in Canberra was investigating Anselm’s time at De La Salle between 1960 and 1989, survivors of sexual assault have come forward to tell their harrowing childhood stories.

Complaints from former students at the Revesby Catholic school in New South Wales where Anselm, also known as Tom Hallam, also worked prompted the lawyers’ De La Salle inquiry.

Michael Gravener contacted the Leader to say he was just 11 years old when Brother Ibar at De La Salle College first abused him.

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The convicted child molester, whose real name is Frank Keating, “had free reign” to do as he pleased, Mr Gravener said.

Now 59, Mr Gravener said he’d been dealing with the emotional fallout of his abuse by Ibar for 48 years.

“It started when I was 11 and ceased when I was 16. In hindsight I’d been groomed, but I had no idea, I was a little Catholic boy,” he said.

“It would happen during playtime. It might just start with rubbing my back. It was a playful thing, he would lift your shirt up and touch your skin.

“I certainly couldn’t tell my parents because I was naive, but I was also frightened … I became fairly withdrawn.

“You became hypervigilant when the brother walked into your classroom. Even in year 12 when I hardly ever saw him I was still very aware this brother could turn up at any moment.

Mr Gravener said he still had nightmares and would be on anxiety medication for the rest of his life.

Ibar, now in his mid 70s, was last year sentenced to five years and three months’ jail with a non-parole period of three years for molesting eight students in the 1970s.

Mr Gravener said he believed other brothers had also abused students

He said some former students, including a friend’s brother, committed suicide years after suffering abuse.

Current De La Salle principal Peter Houlihan said the school apologised ‘unreservedly.’

De La Salle College principal Peter Houlihan told the Leader he’d heard of three brothers who’d abused students during the school’s dark past, and the school apologised “unreservedly”.

He said Brother Anselm worked at the former St Joseph’s Boys School next door, not at De La Salle.

Mr Houlihan said the school was “100 per cent committed” to the safety of students now in its care.

But Mr Gravener said he felt the De La Salle Brothers and the school were trying to “minimalise” the issue.

“He (Ibar) sent me an apology letter, but I take it with a grain of salt … he’s affected my life and more importantly he’s killed people,” he said.

Another former De La Salle student who attended the school from 1974 but wanted to remain anonymous said he thought at least four brothers abused boys and estimated there could be hundreds of victims.

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He was abused by Ibar from 1975, and he said the brother’s usual modus operandi was to hit boys with the strap for alleged misbehaviour — “to break your spirit” — before moving on to sexual abuse.

“You’d get the cuts. These people were into physical abuse too, you knew you’d get punished if you said anything, it was part of the sex abuse,” he said.

“There wasn’t any sexual abuse or physical abuse in year 9 or 10 because us boys were getting bigger and we could fight back,” he said.

In the 1970s and ‘80s Susan (surname withheld) was a former student of the old Kildara College in Malvern, which backed on to St Joseph’s Boys School and the church, run by the De La Salle Brothers. She said she was inappropriately touched by a cleric.

Susan told the Leader the creepy priest would invite girls to his church offices at lunch time by sending a list to her school of the girls he wanted to see. She said he’d put a religious medal around their necks and drop the chain as an excuse to put his hand down their tops and touch them.

“I was in grade three or four. After he would give us a lily or a piece of holy host bread saying that God could see our good work and we should be proud (of) what we were doing,” she said.

Anselm died in the 1990s but the full scale of his offending was still coming to light, Jason Parkinson of Porters Lawyers said.

For more information, visit porterslawyers .com.au

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