A FORMER teacher at Hamilton Marist Brothers, Brother John O'Brien, has been jailed for seven years and nine months with a non-parole period of five years for abusing boys at St Joseph's College in Hunters Hill.
O'Brien taught there before being transferred to Hamilton.
As the Newcastle Herald reported in 2017, O'Brien was charged after abuse came to light during the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.
After a jury trial, O'Brien was found guilty in April this year of multiple charges relating to four different boys who were boarders at St Josephs over two years between 1968 and 1970.
Families with ties to Marist Brothers Hamilton watched the sentencing yesterday, which was streamed live from Lismore District Court.
Audrey Nash, whose son Andrew took his own life aged 13 in 1974 after what the Marist Brothers now accept was sexual abuse, was one of those watching.
She said John O'Brien was now the third Brother who came to her house that night to be convicted as a paedophile. The others were Brother Romuald (William Cable) and Brother Christopher Wade.
"O'Brien is in jail because of what he did at Hunters Hill, but he was sent up here to get him away from there, and do they expect us to believe that he behaved himself when he got up here?" Mrs Nash said after the sentencing.
During the sentencing, Judge Warwick Hunt recounted how O'Brien had one of his victims in a room next to his. The boy went to bed with a piece of string tied to his finger that O'Brien would pull through a hole in the wall to summon him to the priest's bed.
RELATED READING:
In his sentencing, Judge Hunt acknowledged O'Brien's age and other difficulties including COVID but said he had shown no remorse for his victims.
The 81-year-old, who was already on remand at Long Bay, was due to be sentenced last Friday but it was delayed because of a coronavirus lockdown in the prison.
.png?w=600)
