How Vivian Deboo’s evil crimes connected to a nationwide network of church-linked paedophiles
Vivian Deboo’s victims knew from painful experience he was an evil predator. They did not know how far reaching his crimes were until they embarked on a quest that would reveal a church-linked network of child sex criminals.
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An exuberant group of kindy children was singing Christmas songs in an Adelaide kindergarten in 2012 triggered an emotional explosion inside the head of one of the parents.
The man glanced to his left and was instantly stunned, transfixed by the sight of a man who had haunted his most terrifying nightmares since childhood. Why was a paedophile allowed in a preschool?
The man, now known as “A” to protect his identity silently screamed the question in his head, feeling a fierce sense of protectiveness for the children in front of him. He knew in that instant that he had to try to stop Vivian Deboo from being in contact with children.
A had to bring Deboo’s crimes into the light and expose his duplicity — posing as a deacon in the Baptist Church while in fact being a paedophile who destroyed the lives and innocence of children.
The horror of seeing a paedophile watching children in a preschool was overwhelming. A was instantly convinced that he must report to police.
The year before the Christmas concert, A’s brother “B” had bumped into Deboo in a hardware shop and had a panic attack. B told The Advertiser he was paralysed by his first-ever panic attack.
“I thought I was going to die,” he said.
The surprise encounter with Deboo affected him severely.
“It brought everything back. That ignited my need to seek justice.”
The brothers believed until a few weeks ago that the offender had operated alone, meeting families in church settings, gaining their trust and luring boys to work for him at his cafe in Victor Harbor or at isolated church-run campsites as kitchen hands assisting Deboo in his contract catering business, Porters Field Catering.
A FRIEND OF BRANDENBURG
But in the weeks before Deboo’s criminal trial, the brothers were shocked to discover that the offender had a longstanding association with one of Adelaide’s most notorious paedophiles, Robert Brandenburg — and through him to the Church of England Boys Society network of paedophiles spanning the country.
“I did think it was just one man operating but now I realise there’s a much bigger picture behind this,” A said. “It really blew my mind. It made me understand another level of the betrayal.”
“I always thought there was Viv Deboo in my church and he was a monster who did really bad things to me and other children. But I never ever suspected or knew that that was a small arm of a giant monster octopus doing this all over the place. That has spurred me on to shine a light on that and to let others see that.”
Brandenburg gained access to boys through his executive role as state chairman of the CEBS and a key figure of the nationwide Society as well as having a CEBS, branch in the leafy Adelaide Parish of Magill.
Documents seen by The Advertiser show that Brandenburg — who offended against at least 80 boys — counted Deboo among his friends, knew ‘ (Deboo) had sex with boys’ and had “counselled (Deboo) over a number of years”.
In a report to the Adelaide inquiry into abuse in the Anglican Church in Adelaide, camp caretakers wrote that Brandenburg admitted that Deboo stayed at his house when Deboo was in Adelaide. Deboo also joined the Camping Association of South Australia where he regularly met Brandenburg.
The victims, who are both high-achieving professionals in their fields and respected members of the Adelaide community, are determined to expose the extent of Deboo’s offending through connections in at least three church denominations in Adelaide.
The victims claim that if Brandenburg had been ousted from the Anglican Church in the 1970s when Brandenburg was first reported for suspected crimes against children, Deboo may not have been able to gain trusted access to children, including A and B, some 20 years later.
B is angry adults failed to prioritise the safety of children.
A realises how lucky he is that one of the 52 case studies by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse examined the paedophile network that operated inside CEBS.
“If not for case study 36, I might never have known this offender was connected with an interstate religious paedophile network,” A said.
Case study 36 of the Royal Commission examined the CEBS organisation, finding that leaders of the Anglican Church failed to properly question Brandenburg about his offences against children. In its final report last year, the Royal Commission heard there were “instances where Anglican Church personnel across the dioceses of Sydney, Tasmania, Adelaide and Brisbane did not report allegations of child sexual abuse by clergy and other people involved in or associated with CEBS to authorities”.
But the former Anglican Archbishop of Adelaide, Archbishop Ian George, had written to SA police commissioner as early as 2003, telling him “there is a probability that a ‘paedophile ring’ has been operating in the Boys Society for a number of years”.
The Royal Commission case study investigation into paedophilia in SA did not extend to the Baptist church or the Catholic Church’s potential protection of Deboo. A asks: “What did the Baptist Church and the Catholic Church know and what did they do to protect children?”
HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT
Deboo was able to hide in plain sight for years in the Baptist congregation at Victor Harbor, where he was appointed a deacon in the congregation.
As a respected church leader, Deboo approached parents in the parish and offered their children part-time jobs in his cafe, The Kitchen Table, in the town’s main street. Deboo offended with impunity, indecently assaulting at least five boys.
As a child in the Victor Harbor Baptist congregation, A knew that his parents were friendly with Vivian Deboo and his wife, Margaret.
Mrs Deboo gave A piano lessons at the Deboo’s house.
A worked for Deboo at his cafeteria for about six months. During this time, Deboo groomed the child and A had no reason to fear the trusted church deacon and family friend.
It was not until Deboo took the boy, 13, to work as a cook’s assistant to help cater for a religious retreat at St Joseph’s Catholic Convent at Aldgate for a week that Deboo sexually assaulted him. Deboo exposed himself to the child and told the boy to get into Deboo’s bed in a caravan.
A was paralysed with fear as Deboo sexually assaulted him but eventually A managed to fight him off and escaped from the bed. With nowhere to go to safety, A slept on the floor of the caravan under the table.
“I curled up in the foetal position with my arms up to protect myself,” he said. “I was frightened for my life and was in tremendous pain from the assault and this continued for the remainder of the week.”
Deboo allowed the child to phone his parents during the retreat but Deboo stayed with A, preventing the boy from reporting the abuse or telling them that he feared Deboo might kill him.
A worked with Deboo in the kitchen each day and slept under the table for the rest of trip. Deboo told A he was a “naughty boy” and must not tell anyone what happened.
At the end of the retreat, Margaret Deboo — his piano teacher — drove him home. A believes it would have been impossible for Margaret Deboo to not have suspected her husband’s offending yet failed to protect children from him.
“I did not speak from the moment I got into the car to the moment I got out at my house. I did not say a single word or make a single noise. I looked down and was petrified,” he said.
“For a grown woman, who knew me from five or six years of age, I believe it would have been impossible for her not to see that I was intensely frightened — and realise that something terrible had happened to me.”
A recently discovered that four victims of Deboo that he knows of so far were all driven to or from campsites by Margaret Deboo. After the retreat, A immediately ceased up piano lessons.
The abuse destroyed A’s trust in his father and in all men.
“I could not understand how dad would let this happen to me,” he said.
“I thought I had to be very careful of my father.”
After A quit his job at the cafe, Deboo realised his victim had not reported him to his parents. Deboo approached the parents and offered A’s younger brother a job at the cafe. The parents accepted.
B was just 11 on his first day at the cafe when Deboo attacked the younger brother, sexually assaulting him almost immediately. B fled home on his bike at night taking backstreets, terrified that Deboo was chasing him.
Every time a car approached, B leapt from the bike and hid behind bushes, panicking that Deboo would kill him.
Deboo phoned B’s mother and told her that her son had betrayed his trust and was not suitable for the job. B’s mother believed Deboo and was angry that B had lost his job.
Deboo’s cunning tactics — exploiting the trust of the parents — to prevent his victims from reporting to authorities, silenced A and B for more than 20 years. Despite abusing several children, Deboo continued seeking work at camp sites, through his connection with Brandenburg.
In 1993, one of Brandenburg’s victims reported Brandenburg’s offences to Archdeacon Brian Smith, who was “aggressively defensive” of Brandenburg, according to evidence presented to the Royal Commission. Archdeacon Smith “vouched for Mr Brandenburg’s good character”.
The victim, identified only as Mr K, told the Royal Commission that Archdeacon Smith told him: “Be very careful who you talk to about this. We have the best lawyers and we have no hesitation in pursuing you”.
In 1995, Brandenburg recommended Deboo as a camp caterer, this time at an Anglican campsite at the isolated Natural Springs campsite, at Harrogate, 87km east of Adelaide. Caretakers at the campsite, Robert McGlennon and Valerie Crawford, were horrified to read in a newspaper the following year that Deboo had been convicted of sexually abusing children.
Deboo was convicted and jailed in 1996 for six years on nine counts of indecent assault and unlawful sexual intercourse in 1990 and 1991 with three other boys, aged 14-16.
The caretakers told Brandenburg that Deboo was not a suitable employee but Brandenburg told them Deboo was a “good friend” of his who stayed with him when he was in Adelaide and he had been trying to help him for years.
The caretakers said Brandenburg told them he knew Deboo “likes to have sex with boys” but assured them he (Brandenburg) was “safe” despite Deboo being convicted because “when you’ve got friends like I have in the judiciary, lawyers and so on, you’ve got nothing to worry about.”
After leaving their jobs at the campsite, McGlennon and Crawford wrote to their lawyer documenting allegations at the campsite of paedophilia by Deboo and Brandenburg, fearing that if they did not report, “children may be put at risk”.
CONVICTED IN 2018
Having seen Deboo convicted in Adelaide District Court, the brothers are determined to expose Deboo as a predatory paedophile protected by powerful church leaders, including Brandenburg, and allowed to continue offending for many years.
For three years during the police investigation, Deboo signalled his intention to plead not guilty to the charges.
He changed his plea within days of his trial and offered a plea bargain: he would plead guilty to all the lesser sexual assault charges on condition that the brothers dropped an alleged penetrative offence. Deboo thus avoided a trial and avoided facing the most serious of his alleged crimes.
HOME DETENTION
SA’s prison system has been swamped with elderly paedophiles following the Royal Commission and authorities are struggling to house them.
“A member of Parliament told us that this is a huge issue — we have a whole wing of paedophiles in jail. They are being placed at nursing homes or get sent home,” B said.
“I think offenders should be in a secure facility but still be in jail. For me as a victim, I think the offender belongs in jail.”
The long delay in Deboo being brought to justice means he is now elderly. Deboo’s legal team asked for a non-custodial sentence of home detention because he is aged 74.
A and B are adamant that they both received a “life sentence” of suffering and want to see Deboo fairly punished.
“Home detention for these crimes is an absolute joke,” A said. “It is a slap in the face for all the victims.”
“If someone has been through this process, and after three years if someone has pleaded guilty to these types of charges against children and if our society, our laws and our government suggest you can go home to your house and just hang out there — if that’s the level of punishment for these crimes — I think there’s something catastrophically wrong within our system,” he said.
Deboo was sentenced on Tuesday and jailed for six years, seven months and six days jail with a non-parole period of five years and three months.
COMMUNITY AWARENESS
The brothers are going public with a community awareness campaign to ensure paedophiles are punished for the damage they do to young lives.
“The reason for speaking to the media about this now is to increase the penalties for paedophiles and to bring about legal change for mandatory jail time and longer jail time,” B said.
“I think that the current sentencing structure completely devalues the devastating, lifelong impact that child abuse has on not just the child themselves but our entire community.”
RESOLUTION
Confronting his childhood demons has been an emotional rollercoaster for the past three years but A is glad that the chance meeting at a Christmas concert led to him seeing Deboo convicted of some of his crimes after almost 30 years.
Reading out their victim impact statements in court, A and B directed their strongest words to Deboo, telling him he was responsible for the deaths of his victims who had died by suicide.
“Those lost lives are your doing. Their blood is on your hands,” A told him.
“I stand here today as the voice for those who no longer have one. I am proud that I have been able to get some small sense of justice for the victims that are tragically not with us here today.”
If this story causes distress, please contact Lifeline 13 11 14, Beyond Blue 1300 224 636 or Bravehearts 1800 272 831
Originally published as How Vivian Deboo’s evil crimes connected to a nationwide network of church-linked paedophiles
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