The terrible secrets of Brother Victor Higgs — the Catholic schoolteacher who destroyed lives ‘like a wrecking ball’
He seemed caring and jovial but children at St Ignatius College soon learned to steer clear of teacher Brother Victor Higgs. After a parent complained, he was shifted to another school — but one of his victims was determined to make him face justice.
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Peter was 12 years old and fresh into high school at St Ignatius College when he first encountered Brother Victor Higgs.
Tall and lanky, the lad was no different to dozens of other boys tackling this important new stage in their life journey. For them, the next few years would be crucial, and a good education would help set them on a course for the rest of their lives.
It was 1968, an exciting time in a world of change — and Higgs was one of the teachers tasked to help make Peter’s life journey a success.
Now in his early 60s, Peter remembers Higgs as a portly, plump-faced character — a cross between Robin Hood’s Friar Tuck and Curly from the Three Stooges.
But while the teacher was jovial and friendly, Peter soon learned some students were wary of him. They knew he had a fondness for young boys.
Unfortunately for Peter, he found out too late.
“He’s a poofter — you didn’t let him touch you, did you?” one student asked Peter, seconds after Higgs molested him in an office at the Athelstone college one day in that first year.
Jesuit Brother Victor Thomas Higgs, now 81, will likely be remembered as one of the worst sexual predators to emerge from within any church in Australia.
In just a few years, his deviant behaviour evolved from fondling pubescent boys at Adelaide’s respected St Ignatius College, to engaging in sexual acts with boys in their early teens at Sydney’s prestigious St Ignatius College Riverview — well-known for its long list of notable alumni, including former Prime Minister Tony Abbott and former deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce.
His selfish actions have left a string of victims and their families still dealing with the traumatic impact of his abuse. It has also destroyed their faith.
“It was,” says one of his Sydney victims, “just like a wrecking ball through lives”.
Yet it didn’t have to be this way. Higgs, a teacher, could have been brought to justice in South Australia more than four decades before he was finally held to account. His offending had been discovered in Adelaide in 1970, after a victim told his mother. At that point, Higgs should have been reported to police. But neither the victim’s mother or the college hierarchy, whom the victim insists she told the next day, did so.
Instead, at the end of that year, Higgs was transferred to another Jesuit-run school in NSW.
While his offending at St Ignatius College at Athelstone was confined to fondling the genitals of young teenage boys, it can now be seen as the forerunner to his later activities. Once at Riverview, his deviant behaviour escalated into more physical acts of sexual abuse, including the penetration of many young male students.
Eventually he would be caught and face justice. In 2016, Higgs served 12 months jail in SA for crimes committed while teaching at Athelstone in the late 1960s. Then, last month, he was found guilty of 16 charges involving the abuse of six male students at Riverview from 1972-1980. His sentencing process started in Sydney today.
‘He’d been sent to another school’
Like Peter, David was in his teens — 13 — when he first met Higgs at St Ignatius in 1970. Although their encounter was brief, it left a lasting legacy. Perhaps his most enduring injury has been to his trust and faith in an institution that was such a large part of his family life.
Higgs never touched David, but, some 48 years on, his victim still vividly recalls exactly what happened after being called into an office.
“He pulled the blinds down. It was a hot day and I could hear the noise from the playground,” he recalls. “He started talking about his classes, the sexual development of the boys and said he needed to have an idea of the sexual development of the kids he was teaching to know how to pitch his classes.”
David was told to pull his trousers down and bare his genitals. Although confused by this, he did as he was told by Higgs, someone he viewed as a figure of authority. Higgs circled him for several minutes pointing out to him features of his anatomy. But he never touched him.
While David told no one at school, that night he says he did tell his mother. Although his parents were very conservative about talking about sex, his mother was quite worldly, having travelled extensively and the pair communicated very well.
“I told her a weird thing had happened at school and told her the story,” David says.
“She was like ‘what?’ and was shocked and leapt into action. Exactly what she did I don’t know, but I know she went to the school and told them. I don’t know who she spoke to, but she spoke to someone.
“She told me that a few days later this teacher, Brother Higgs, had been sent off to another school. I thought that seemed odd, if he was in trouble for doing something that he probably should not have been doing, even though nothing traumatic happened to me personally.
“I asked mum about it and she just said ‘well, it’s up to them to deal with it’. I think she probably just thought this type of thing didn’t happen very much and they had a process to deal with it.”
The Jesuits say they have no record of any parent making such a complaint against Higgs and unfortunately David’s mother has passed away. The Jesuits insist Higgs’ move was not unusual. They say it was usual practice for staff to change location every few years at year’s end.
But, as will be seen, there is evidence from Higgs himself that backs David’s assertions.
David says he gave the incident little thought again until 2014 when he received an email from St Ignatius headmaster Father Robert Davoren, advising him a former teacher had been charged with sex offences involving students. He emailed him and detailed his own encounter with Higgs and that he had told his mother.
“My mother, a devout and charitable-thinking Catholic was also confident enough in the truth of my account that she went straight to the school and complained,” David stated in the 2014 email.
“Br Higgs disappeared. There was no discussion. He was no doubt transferred to a new school and I fear continued on his merry way. I did not understand that at all. It was the end of any unquestioning confidence in the authority of the church as far as a moral authority for me!
“I think I tried to think this was such an unusual situation that it wasn’t good to overemphasise its significance. It was a one-off! Unfortunately, in hindsight, that attitude was exactly the one that enables this culture to flourish hidden inside the organisation.
“I later heard other stories of sexual contact between pupils and the same brother, and also other priests/brothers and novitiates. I often wondered if Brother Higgs went on to inflict real damage to any boys elsewhere? I feel some slight responsibility and I wished that I understood more clearly what was going on at the time.”
David concluded the email by telling Father Davoren he could put his letter “in the Brother Higgs file” and wished him well “in what I hope is a sincere attempt to root out the cancer in your organisation”.
Not long after sending the email, David was contacted by a detective from SAPOL’s sex crimes investigation branch and provided a statement that was included in the prosecution case against Higgs in SA’s District Court.
‘I felt defiled and cheated’
The fact that Higgs faced justice at all is thanks to the determination of Peter, the boy he abused at St Ignatius in 1968. While David had put the teacher out of his mind, Peter had not. After more than 40 years, in 2011, Peter reported Higgs’s crime to police.
Peter does not know why he was one of those targeted by Higgs. He recalls being called into an office, being told to drop his trousers and then having his genitals fondled by Higgs under the guise of a pseudo sex education session.
His memories of what happened when he left the office are still clear. Several of his fellow students immediately asked him to confirm if Higgs had touched him.
“He’s a poofter — you didn’t let him touch you, did you?” one of them asked him.
Other boys then chimed in, he says: “Oh no, you let him touch you — that makes you a poofter.”
After the incident, a one-off, Peter says he felt strange. He knew he had been unjustly interfered with.
“I felt defiled and cheated,” he says. “I knew it was wrong what he was doing at the time, but didn’t know what I could do about it. When you are that age, if a teacher tells you to take your pants down, you do it. It made me feel weak, stupid, frightened — the whole thing.”
Unlike David, he didn’t tell his mother — or anyone else. It was the 1990s, when he found out his mother was donating money to St Ignatius, that he challenged her for doing so.
“I remember losing it one day and just saying to her, ‘What the hell, why are you giving money to the school? They touched me up, made me take my pants down, they are disgusting’,” he says.
It drove a wedge between himself and his brothers who also attended St Ignatius. “You have not done anything wrong, but when you get angry about it and express it, then they make you feel as though you have done something wrong,” he says.
Peter says while he thought about reporting Higgs to police himself, he refrained from doing so while his mother was alive, to respect her feelings.
“I was terrified it would become public and she would say, ‘Why have you done this, why have you damaged the name of the school and our family?’,” he explains.
After his mother died in 2005, he made the first moves. In 2006 he entered the Catholic Church Towards Healing program and had a meeting with senior Jesuits in 2008 at which he says he stated he wanted police advised.
Peter’s lawyer, Susan Litchfield, also remembers this meeting.
“It was discussed about going to the police,” she recalls. “There was an understanding police would be informed. There was also agreement that anti-child abuse expert Freda Briggs would be engaged to draw up new protocols for St Ignatius in cases such as this.
“I remember I had to write to them some months later to chase that aspect up because it didn’t happen.”
Peter also spoke with Bishop Greg O’Kelly, at that time an auxiliary bishop in the Catholic Diocese of Adelaide, who formally apologised for what had happened. (O’Kelly had earlier been a teacher at St Ignatius when Higgs had taught there, and shared accommodation with him.)
The Jesuits differ about what happened at that meeting. Simon Davies, the Director of Professional Standards for the Australian Province of the Society of Jesus, said notes of the 2008 meeting differed slightly with the accounts given by Peter and Litchfield.
“We are deeply sorry for the suffering of those who have been abused by Jesuits in the past,” he tells SA Weekend.
“Out of respect for the privacy and wishes of survivors, and in accordance with best practice, we encourage adult survivors of historical abuse to report abuse to police themselves, unless we are required to do so by law. In this instance, we agreed to report the matter. Our records indicate that the matter was in fact reported to the South Australian police in 2008.”
SAPOL has a different view. A spokeswoman says its records indicate the matter involving Peter first came to its attention in November 2011, with a statement taken and investigation pursued in a timely manner after that report.
“There is no record of any contact by anyone to SAPOL before that,” the spokeswoman said.
Despite the Jesuits’ statement, it appears the catalyst for police involvement was a conversation Peter had with a fellow St Ignatius student at the Royal Adelaide Hospital in late 2011. Among the small talk, the other man disclosed that he had also been abused by Higgs. “I thought, ‘that means there are two people’,” says Peter. “I went to the police and reported it.”
Peter gave police a formal statement in early 2012, as did several other students who all endured the same humiliation at the hands of Brother Higgs, who was then formally interviewed by NSW detectives in 2013, on behalf of SA police, and charged shortly afterwards with three counts of indecent assault.
In January 2016, the day before his trial, Higgs pleaded guilty to two counts of indecent assault — one involving Peter and the second another student. A third charge was not proceeded with.
Peter says when he was told Higgs was to plead guilty, he told the police he hoped investigations were underway to examine if he had offended after he left Athelstone.
They were, but not by NSW police. The national child abuse Royal Commission had prompted victims of Higgs to come forward and Riverview had sent a letter to all students who attended the school, asking them to come forward if they had been abused.
Peter says when he heard Higgs had been charged by NSW police in 2017, he started to feel comfortable about his actions.
“I started to feel that what I had done was right,” he says. “But I kept thinking to myself about the fact he got moved and the fact he did it at the next school, where he had access to even more students because it was a boarding school. I felt it was sickening really, that a paedophile could in fact be promoted to a better place to commit acts of evil.”
‘It was time to stop what I’d been doing’
In March 2016, Provincial of the Jesuits, Father Brian McCoy, issued a statement condemning the conduct of Higgs that touched on this prickly issue.
“We condemn any abuse of children or young people, and offer an unreserved apology for the trauma caused by any Jesuit who betrayed others in this way,” he said.
“Victor Higgs taught at a number of schools following a period of teaching in Adelaide. Although a significant amount of time has passed, the records that are available have been reviewed in detail.
“To date, we have no evidence that Victor Higgs’ moves related to the events to which he subsequently pleaded guilty. However, we cannot discount this possibility.”
During Higgs’ police interview over the abuse allegations, he stumbled through questioning about why he was transferred from Athelstone to Riverview.
When asked by NSW Detective Senior Constable Scott Orlovich about this, Higgs said the move was suggested by the then Provincial — who had also discussed with him one of the incidents involving a student.
“The Provincial at that time in 1970 came along and just, well, well they always say, you know ‘ever thought about a change?’’’ Higgs told Orlovich.
“And I said ‘no’. ‘But if you are,’ I said, ‘what about Riverview?’ ‘cos I came from Sydney. And straight away he said, ‘oh,’ he said, ‘yes, we need someone there with accounting knowledge’ ‘cos old Brother Johnson had been there 50 years.
“So that was the reason I got sent there, to use my accounting knowledge.”
Yet, in the same statement, Higgs contradicts this explanation. At the conclusion of the interview, he tells Orlovich that there had been “so much talk about my interviewing these students” and — importantly — he also said a parent had complained to the school.
“ … and obviously it was being talked about within their home as well and, and that’s when, when this parent brought it to the notice of the Rector and that’s, that’s what brought it all to a head in a way, that it, I realised then that it was, it was time to, to stop what I’d been doing …”
A fortnight after interviewing Higgs, Orlovich received a phone call from him volunteering more information, this time in the form of a letter he would send him.
In his letter to Orlovich, Higgs details how in October 2003, Provincial Mark Raper and another Jesuit priest, Father Geoff King, who also happened to be a canon lawyer, visited him at the nursing home he was residing in.
He explained their visit was to discuss allegations of abuse made by one of the victims from St Ignatius in SA. He states that Raper had asked him to write a letter to the victim, who was having “issues in his life”.
“He felt that this would bring closure to the matter,” Higgs wrote. “I did as requested, feeling my action would also bring closure for the Jesuits.”
Higgs wrote letters apologising to two of his Athelstone victims.
A few weeks after their visit, Raper wrote a letter to Higgs thanking him for his warm welcome. “Thanks too for your help in sending the letter on the other matter,” Raper also stated. “I’ve sent it on to Geoff (King), who hopefully can now put that issue to rest.
“Vic, you remain our Brother always. Your time as a Jesuit has created an important bond that cannot be broken.”
When shown this letter by SA Weekend, Peter was shocked. “It just proves that they say one thing and do another,” he says. “They will issue public statements condemning the abuse of the children they were meant to be caring for, but behind closed doors, they are comforting one another and reinforcing their bonds. They are complete frauds; they wonder why people have lost their faith.”
Bishop O’Kelly declined to be interviewed by SA Weekend, but in a statement in response to a series of questions, he says he was unaware of any allegations surrounding Higgs in 1970 or why he was moved on that year. However, his spokeswoman confirmed he was “formally notified through a victim’s lawyer in 2007 of allegations of sexual abuse against Victor Higgs”.
“He referred the matter to the Australian Province of the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits). He also made telephone contact with the victim to express his concern and sorrow,” the statement said.
“Bishop O’Kelly was not involved in the compensation settlement. He is not aware of any request for the matter to be referred to the police.”
Despite the denial, Peter says he has suspicions that Bishop O’Kelly may have known why Higgs was moved on. The pair shared accommodation and worked together as teachers at Athelstone. Although O’Kelly was studying interstate when Higgs was moved, Peter says he finds it hard to believe his behaviour wasn’t discussed.
He now also wonders even more, given the talk among parents and students about Higgs at the time — and evidenced by Higgs’ own later statements. Putting that aside, Peter says Bishop O’Kelly “certainly knew about his abuse when I came forward (in 2007),” and did not report it to police.
‘He was all pervasive, he was everywhere’
But the time when there was a real opportunity to stop Higgs, and prevent harm, was back in 1970 when David says his mother went to St Ignatius — an assertion given strong credibility by Higgs’ own admissions to police.
That would have saved the boys at Riverview in NSW.
Boys like Michael. Another Higgs victim, Michael, rues the lack of action by the St Ignatius hierarchy at that time. That would, he says, have saved literally dozens of young boys from future abuse. Michael was a boarder at Riverview in Sydney when he encountered Brother Higgs in January 1974. He soon learned Higgs had a reputation as a “creep” among the other students.
The abuse of Michael continued until August 1975 when he was transferred to another Jesuit school in Sydney, St Aloysius, after complaining about Higgs and another Brother who also abused him.
Nothing had changed in Higgs’ modus operandi — despite his statement to Detective Orlovich in 2013 that he had stopped “examining” boys in Adelaide in 1970.
Just like his conduct at Athelstone, Higgs started grooming Michael, who was aged 14 at the time, by speaking to him about sexual development, growth and hygiene issues.
“He would discuss your development, opening your shirt, asking about puberty and sexual arousal, and into the ‘creepy zone’ as I called it in my head,” he says.
“When the abuse proper kicked off, it was predominantly after I came back from rowing.
“He would open up my rowing shorts and fondle my genitals, making a groaning sound — I can still hear it today. It graduated to him digitally raping me.
“He was always hanging around a number of the boarding houses, he was all pervasive, he was everywhere.”
Michael said he reported Higgs’ abuse to his boarding house master, expecting action to be taken against him.
Instead, that Brother — who cannot be named for legal reasons — also abused him. His specialty was taking Michael into his bedroom at night and, while the boy was naked, beating him on the genitals with a strap.
Although deeply troubled by what had happened, Michael remained silent until the Royal Commission provided him with an opportunity. He subsequently provided a statement to both SA police and NSW police in 2015 in connection with each respective prosecution of Higgs.
It was then that he learned Higgs had first offended at Athelstone before being transferred to Riverview.
“If they were told they certainly, without a doubt, should have immediately gone to police and reported the matter,” Michael says. “Certainly not move the bastard anywhere near children.”
Michael believes it is “inconceivable” that Higgs could operate at Riverview for so long without others knowing what he was doing.
“I am gutted,” he says. “No amount of money, nothing, could compensate for the damage that occurred by allowing him to go rogue. It is breathtaking, allowing that man to go rogue was just like a wrecking ball through lives. To this day, the ripple effect for families is horrific.”
There would have been dozens of victims at Riverview, he believes.
“I think the vast majority of the boys who were abused would not come forward because they have high-stakes careers and they don’t want to risk that and their family by doing so,” Michael says. “He was like a raging bull going through the place — he was everywhere.”
Michael was compensated last year. Even then, the Jesuits played hardball. Rather than display a compassionate attitude to him, he was told giving him money would result in less going to their missions across the world.
“In other words, I would be contributing to someone’s death,” he says.
“That cheered me up, it was just disgusting, their whole attitude.”
Footnote: Peter, David and Michael are not the victims’ real names
Originally published as The terrible secrets of Brother Victor Higgs — the Catholic schoolteacher who destroyed lives ‘like a wrecking ball’
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