Survivors of abuse under St John of God call for accountability

09:10 am on 26 June 2024

Tim Brown, Senior Reporter

tim.brown@rnz.co.nz

Warning: This story discusses graphic details of sexual abuse.

Abuse survivor Darryl Smith as a 10-year-old. Photo: Supplied / Darryl Smith

"What they owe me is everything - and how do you put a price on everything?"

Darryl Smith's life - and all the opportunities and hopes contained - was stolen at the hands of the Brothers Hospitallers of St John of God.

For almost four decades, the Catholic order claimed to care for the children in Christchurch no one else would.

Marylands School, St Joseph's Orphanage and the Hebron Trust were meant to offer refuge for some of the country's most vulnerable children.

Instead, they were dens of depravity where innocence was stolen and lives were destroyed.

Smith was born in Christchurch.

He found himself at Marylands School in 1971 as a 7-year-old after being expelled from Russley Primary School for hitting a teacher.

He found himself at Marylands School because the Department of Education convinced his parents it was the best place for a child with behavioural problems.

"They conned my parents basically by saying they [Marylands School] were good people - they look after their children well and he'll get good education," Smith said.

His parents even paid for the privilege of sending their son to the school run by Brothers of St John of God.

The abuse was rife - not only from the supposed carers, but also other students.

"On the second day ... I was raped."

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His abuser was a child of no more than 12 or 13 years.

"Within three months of being there, the Prior of Marylands, Roger William Maloney, called me into an office - an older boy said I had a phone call from my grandmother. There was no phone call, there was just rape in an office."

He lost his relationship with his parents because of the Brothers.

"I went from a child that they loved very much to a child they hated," he recalled.

He tried to reveal the abuse he faced at the school, but they would not listen.

"I'd go home in the weekends, tell my mother and father that these people are touching me and I'd get a hiding - I'm lying, these people don't do that."

He feared speaking out and even if he did, no one would listen.

Smith spent less than a year at the school but the effects - in all facets of his life - had reverberated since.

Darryl Smith at the Royal Commission Inquiry into Abuse in Care in 2022. Photo: Supplied / Royal Commission Inquiry into Abuse in Care

After Marylands, he traded abusive situation for abusive situation and ultimately ended up in prison in 1983.

And the reason he was at Marylands was because the state recommended he be there.

'I grew up believing I was the right hand of the devil'

The abuse of the Brothers of St John of God was not only limited to sexual and physical violence.

Peter Wall grew up in a dysfunctional Roman Catholic family.

His second three-month stay at St Joseph's Orphanage as a 10-year-old had left him spiritually scarred.

"As a Roman Catholic by birth, and being brought up in the religion, I prayed and I prayed as sincerely as any 10-year-old could pray to God to stop what was happening. You know this is going on in his [God's] house, by his subordinates. But it never stopped."

But his last memory of being abused was challenging the devil to intervene where it seemed God would not.

"About three seconds after laying the challenge down, the door opened up, a male called my abuser and said he was needed up at Marylands Hospital immediately. So he got his trousers back on, straightened himself up and left. And I was just left there in this room wondering what had really happened."

After that night, he was not abused again before leaving the orphanage.

"So I grew up believing I was the right hand of the devil."

"I've done a lot of evil things, a lot of demonic things, believing that I was a demon and had given my soul to the devil. I'd lost my religion. I spent years and years studying different religions trying to fill a void - but I never could."

Wall was a state ward at 18 months old.

He was at the mercy of the Brothers of St John of God at 10.

'I needed a place of safety'

Eddie Marriott did not get to go home on the weekends.

In 1974, when he was 5-years-old, he was taken from his abusive home in Waikato to Marylands School.

"I needed to have a place of safety. The Department of Social Welfare weren't happy about me staying at home within the family environment, so they found a boarding school and the only one they could find was St John of God," he said.

Instead of safety, he found abuse.

First at the hands of students.

Two older boys threatened him in a bathroom and sexually assaulted him.

Marriott was 6.

Then came the abuse from the Brothers.

Brother Ambrose was the first, but his primary abuser was Brother Raymond Garchow.

The sexual abuse; the violence; the neglect all continued for the next decade.

"I saw people come and go - and I didn't," Marriott said.

"That really got me because no one came as young as I did."

Marriott was still at the school in 1984 when the Brothers of St John of God left and it was taken over by the Department of Education.

But his decade of torment at the hand of the Brothers was because the state recommended he be there.

Eddie Marriott attends a Christchurch event for the renaming of the former Marylands Reserve and Marylands Place to Validation Park and Validation Place, in honour of the survivors. Photo: RNZ / Nate McKinnon

'There's no accountability'

In 1984, the Bishop of Christchurch invited the Brothers of St John of God to establish a youth ministry for vulnerable and homeless teens.

Brother Bernard McGrath, one of the order's most prolific child rapists, ran the Hebron Trust.

The church knew of his offending as early as 1977 and at the Hebron Trust it continued and escalated.

The state formally recognised Hebron Trust as an appropriate place to care for young people in 1990, by approving its registration as a state service provider.

Hanz Freller's mother walked out on him at age 2 and his father followed when he was 14.

At age 15, he turned to the trust.

Brother McGrath took an interest in him and helped him return back to school.

Looking back, he sees he was being groomed.

"Of course, hindsight is an amazing thing. You don't think of it as a youngster, he just comes in the morning and he will just stand at the end of the bed or up against the the wardrobe. Ask me how my day went and and all that sort of stuff. So trying to just build a relationship," Freller recalled.

"Then it gets to a stage where he would come in his pyjamas ... and now it's a little bit earlier and he'll come in and he'll just sit down on the end of the bed.

"This is winter time and he was coming in [the room] in his pyjamas and then it got to the stage where he would ask to jump into bed because it was cold. You know, it was the middle of winter ... at first I kind of thought it was strange. But I'm like 'okay, well, it's nothing untoward. He's a nice person'."

But it eventually escalated to sexual assault.

"The first time it ever happened I just freaked out. I just froze."

The abuse continued for three years.

Freller said learning the order was informed of the offending of Brother McGrath more than a decade before he groomed him made him "sick to my stomach".

"There's no accountability. They don't care. If they cared they would do something rather than ship them around."

Brother McGrath was at the Hebron Trust because the Brothers of St John of God posted him there, and the Hebron Trust cared for vulnerable children with the approval of the state.

Hanz Freller, (centre) with advocate Ken Clearwater (right), and fellow survivor Peter Wall (left). Photo: RNZ / Nate McKinnon

A legacy of shocking abuse

Marylands School opened in 1955.

Retired detective Earle Borrell, who managed the team in 2003 which investigated allegations of abuse at the school, said he was unaware of any time during the school's three-decade history when sexual abuse was not taking place.

More than 530 boys went through school during its almost 30 years of operations and more than one in five reported abuse while in its care.

Borrell said it was likely there were more victims.

"We only know what we were told about and there is no doubt that not all victims came forward," he said.

The 40-year history of the Brothers of St John of God in Christchurch was one of abuse against the community's most vulnerable.

The investigation was the most complex and fraught Borrell had ever worked on, but securing convictions for the survivors was a focus for the whole team.

Marylands School is on the left of this image with the orphanage on the right. Photo: Supplied / V C Browne & Son

However, police were not able to secure convictions against some of the historical offenders, which still haunted Borrell.

"The survivors from that period from the mid 50s through into the 60s were mainly orphans and the offending on them was absolutely horrific. Horrific," he said.

"We all felt that and we attempted to extradite Brothers from Australia to get them back here before the court."

However, they did not succeed in extraditing the Brothers and that failure was felt by the investigators.

"We tried, we went over to Australia, attended three extradition hearings. We did our very best because that period of offending was so shocking."

On Tuesday, the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care delivered its final report and recommendations to Governor-General Dame Cindy Kiro, who will hand over the 2500-page report to Minister of Internal Affairs Brooke van Velden.

It is expected to be made public on the week of 22 July when it is tabled in Parliament by the government. Parliament sits on Wednesday and Thursday this week, before going into recess for three weeks.

Smith, Wall, Marriott and Freller agreed the government needed to implement all of the commission's recommendations and move swiftly on meaningful and enduring compensation for victims.

"They owe me a lifetime. They owe me a childhood. I didn't have a childhood because of the church and the state. I didn't have a life after the fact," Smith said.

"I've never had a relationship, so I've never had children.

"It started from the systemic abuse - it's all related to that.

"What they owe me is everything - and how do you put a price on everything?"

The men also agreed that there was no time to waste because as time passed, so too did the survivors.

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