Complaints about pedophile cleric ‘factor’ in decision to move him

Complaints about a sadistic Catholic pedophile were ‘a factor’ in a decision to move him from South Australia to NSW.

Victor Higgs was convicted of indecently assaulting teenage boys at Saint Ignatius' College, Riverview.

Complaints about a sadistic Catholic pedophile were “a factor” in a decision to move him from South Australia to NSW, where he went on to abuse boys at one of Sydney’s leading schools.

A long-awaited report by former Victorian Supreme Court chief justice Marilyn Warren has found that at least three complaints were made about serial offender and former Jesuit brother Victor Higgs before he was moved interstate.

The complaints were made to the then head of school and rector, Father Frank Wallace, regarding Higgs’s conduct at St Ignatius College in Athelstone, in Adelaide’s east, according to a report summary.

The substance of at least some of those complaints was conveyed to the then Provincial, Father Francis Peter Kelly, the head of the Jesuits in Australia at the time.

Higgs was then transferred in 1970 to the prestigious St Ignatius College Riverview in Sydney.

A report summary released on Monday said: “The fact of these complaints was a factor in the decision to move Higgs from Athelstone to Riverview in 1970”.

Jesuits’ professional standards director Simon Davies said survivors were being contacted to seek their permission to release the full 86-page report and some had asked for time to consider it. Not all of the complaints dealt with in the report had been part of Higgs’s criminal prosecution, he said.

However, the former student at St Ignatius College in Adelaide who first reported Higgs to the church hierarchy and police said the full report should have been released on Monday.

“They moved a known reported child abuser to a boarding school and left him in the order for nearly 30 years after he’d been reported. This will give victims a case for a civil claim and I hope they take it,” said the ex-student, who did not wish to be named.

“Personally I’m exhausted after 13 years of this sorry saga. The Jesuit order should hang its head in shame today. It’s an appalling cover up.”

Higgs was sentenced last year in NSW to at least 7½ years in jail for abusing six boys aged about 12 in the 1970s and 1980s at Riverview.

He was described as a “wrecking ball” in the boys’ lives, with a court hearing about the devastating impact of his predatory behaviour, which caused intimacy issues, substance abuse, shame and distrust.

He earlier served 12 months in jail for abusing three students in South Australia; he was extradited to NSW after his release.

The Jesuits’ Provincial, Brian McCoy, said in a video statement on Monday that he received Ms Warren’s report last Friday and he was “saddened and ashamed” by her findings.

“I am truly sorry,” he said.

The Australian Province of the Society of Jesus announced the appointment of Ms Warren 12 months ago to determine what the schools knew and when about Higgs’s offending.

The report confirms what critics have long maintained — that Higgs was shifted to Riverview in the early 1970s after the church was told he had offended.

The school’s high-profile alumni include former Prime Minister Tony Abbott and former Nationals leader Barnaby Joyce.

Mr Joyce has previously told The Australian that he had clear memories of Higgs trying to kiss him when he was just 13 and that he and his fellow boarders banded together to protect themselves from him.

He told The Australian on Monday that Higgs was “put in a position of trust and abused it in every sense of that word”.

“A bad person should not be moved on, they should be moved out,” he said.

“The only place they should be moved on to is the local police station where they should be charged and brought before a court.”

However, Mr Joyce said the actions of bad people should “not diminish the overall goodness of what the church does”.

Higgs left the Jesuit order in 2001.

Mr Davies said the Jesuits were the first Catholic organisation to join the national redress scheme but had not received many applications under it. If survivors wished to take court action, the order would be there to help them, he said.

“We’re here to assist wherever we can,” he said. “If people wish to take legal action then we will do our best to support them in that action.”