• By a Broken Rites researcher, article updated 11 April 2020

One of Australia’s Catholic religious orders – the St John of God Brothers – has specialised in accommodating boys who have an educational (or intellectual) disability. One of these institutions was the "Kendall Grange" boys' home in Morriset, near Newcastle in New South Wales. For many years, Broken Rites has been researching Brother Bernard Kevin McGrath, who committed sexual crimes against many of these disabled victims. McGrath has already served several jail terms regarding some of his victims. In 2019, McGrath (aged 72) was sentenced to additional time in jail regarding some more of his victims, and (according to this sentence) McGrath would be aged 97 before his earliest release date. For many years, Broken Rites has been regularly updating this McGrath article.

Broken Rites research

Bernard Kevin McGrath (born 22 May 1947) grew up in New Zealand. In the 1960s, aged 18, he joined the St John of God Brothers (SJOG), a Catholic religious order which was conducting residential institutions in Australia and New Zealand. For his training, he went to Sydney where the SJOG order has its headquarters for Australia and New Zealand. Most of McGrath's working life has been spent at SJOG institutions in Australia and New Zealand.

McGrath gave details of his SJOG career in a six-hours videotaped interview with New Zealand detectives in 2003. In the videotape, which was shown in a New Zealand courtroom in 2006, McGrath tells how he was bullied by his authoritarian father who pressured him into joining a religious order at age 18. (McGrath’s father had trained for the Catholic priesthood but ended up as a manual worker.)

The court was told that, when McGrath began training with SJOG in Sydney, a senior brother there had a habit of making sexual overtures towards the trainees. (For legal reasons, we will call this man Brother X.) The sexual abuse McGrath claimed he suffered resembled the kinds of indecencies that he later inflicted on the boys in his custody.

After training in New South Wales, McGrath spent a year at a SJOG institution in Melbourne. In January 1974, he was transferred to New Zealand to be teacher and dormitory master at "Marylands", a SJOG boarding school near Christchurch for boys with learning and behavioural difficulties. At Marylands, the court was told, McGrath again encountered Brother X. Brother X allegedly set the tone for the culture at Marylands and ensured that complaints about sexual abuse by Brothers like McGrath were covered up.

The court was told that some boys would complain to senior Brothers about sexual abuse. Not only was nothing done but they would be punished for making their complaints.

The court was told that a boy from another dorm came to McGrath to complain about being sexually abused. McGrath says on the videotape: "I didn't do anything because I'd played up myself, you know, so what do you do? How do you go and challenge someone when you've committed these sins."

About 1978, after spending nearly four years at Marylands, McGrath was sent to St John of God’s “Kendall Grange” boarding institution at Morriset, New South Wales, for boys with educational difficulties. There, McGrath admitted on the videotape, he continued to sexually abuse boys.

In 1986, McGrath transferred from Morriset back to New Zealand to establish a residential program in Christchurch, the Hebron Trust, teaching life skills to street kids.

McGrath's first conviction

In New Zealand, two social workers raised the alarm about McGrath's indecent advances towards four of the Christchurch street kids on his course in 1991. The social workers raised the issue with the SJOG order but the order failed to act, so the social workers contacted the New Zealand police.

Four of the Hebron Trust boys, aged then between 14 and 16, told detectives that McGrath had touched them indecently. Then two of the former Marylands boys, now grown men, also complained McGrath had sexually molested them while at the school.

In 1993, McGrath was sentenced to three years jail in New Zealand for his offences at Marylands and the Hebron Trust

The story of Alex

Meanwhile, in 1992 (before Brother McGrath’s jailing), an ex-pupil of the SJOG "Kendall Grange" boarding school in Morriset, NSW — "Alex" (not his real name) — complained to SJOG headquarters in Sydney that he had encountered Brother McGrath while he was a boarder for four years from 1980 to 1984. Alex (born 1969) told Broken Rites in 1994 that his SJOG experience disillusioned him about schools. He ran away from Kendall Grange and stopped his education, with no qualifications, ending up on the dole and finally on a disability pension. Alex says that St John of God “screwed up” his life. He says the SJOG experience left him with lasting feelings of shame and anxiety, emotional turmoil, depression and an explosive temper.

Alex says that, when he told the Australian leader of SJOG about McGrath, the leader expressed no surprise about Alex's statement.

Alex had expected that SJOG would report McGrath to the New South Wales police for prosecution but (he said) this did not happen.

The story of Jimmy — and McGrath's second conviction

In Sydney in 1989, another McGrath victim ("Jimmy", born in 1970) was having adolescent behavioural difficulties. He disclosed to his mother what McGrath had done to him in 1982-3 while at Kendall Grange. At the time of the offences, Jimmy was aged 11 to 13. In 1992, Jimmy’s mother (“Jill”) told the Australian head of SJOG who admitted that this was not the first complaint against McGrath.

In 1995, Jimmy made a police statement at Sydney’s Chatswood Crime Squad. After McGrath completed his New Zealand jail term, the police took him back to Sydney, where he pleaded guilty and was sentenced in 1997 to nine months jail for the offences against Jimmy.

With the help of lawyers, and after 10 years of protracted proceedings constantly delayed by the stalling of lawyers for the SJOG order, Jimmy was forced to accept an out-of-court settlement amount for compensation. The amount seemed reasonable compared to other victims but his legal costs took a big bite out of his payout. Jimmy wasn't happy with an out-of-court settlement — he would have preferred to have his day in court.

Jill has been in frequent contact with Broken Rites.

In March 2006, “Jill”, explained how she sent Jimmy to the Morriset school because his dyslexia was making him too disruptive to remain in the school he was attending.

"I didn't want him to go, but a teacher told me that my son needed more help than his school could give him. I went to all the other schools in the local area and they refused to take him," Jill said.

"I knew nothing about (the abuse) until my son told me years later. I knew he wasn't happy at Morriset, but they covered it up so well and scared the kids so much.

"I used to ring Brother McGrath who was the Prior at Kendall Grange school, Morriset. I would tell McGrath that my son isn't happy and he's crying. McGrath just said all the boys do that; he just doesn't want the discipline and they need discipline.

"I didn't learn about the abuse until 1989. My son had a girlfriend and their relationship was pretty volatile and he was on drugs pretty heavily in his teenage years.

"She'd charged him with assault and when we were going to court he said `I've got something terrible to tell you' and that's when it all came out. I didn't believe him at first. Talk about naive — I couldn't believe it could happen."

Jill says there were hints that McGrath's proclivities were known to the St John of God order, but nothing was done.

"Their conspiracy of silence is terrible. A psychiatrist at the school said (at the time) there were problems at this school and to try to get my son out as soon as I could. I said there was nowhere else to go. In those days there was no onus on schools to accept pupils as there is today.

"When I told the psychiatrist later about McGrath, she said `I wouldn't have picked him'. There were others there she must have known about.

"I now know of five boys who were molested at Morriset. I don't think we've even scratched the surface. The tragedy is that my son must have felt so alone.

"My life hasn't been the same since. I've tried to get on with my life but it hits me sometimes. I feel very remorseful about my son – it's like a knife going in.

"In the early years, he blamed me for putting him in that school. He went violent one night and I had to run next door to a neighbour and bolt the door. I know if I'd stayed in the house, he'd have done something to me."

Third conviction (New Zealand, 2006)

In 2002, more complainants contacted the New Zealand police concerning sexual assaults by Bernard McGrath and other SJOG Brothers at the Marylands institution, dating back several decades.

In the New Zealand High Court in Christchurch in March 2006, Brother McGrath, then 58, was found guilty of 21 charges, including eight charges of inducing an indecent act and 13 charges of indecent assault, relating to his time at Marylands between 1974 and 1977. He was acquitted of some other charges, including charges of sodomy.

The court sentenced McGrath to five years jail. The court took into account McGrath’s two earlier prison terms -- the three years in New Zealand in 1993 and the nine months in Australia in 1997.

According to the New Zealand Herald newspaper on 7 April 2010, McGrath was released from his New Zealand jail on parole in February 2008, just less than two years into his five-year term.

Fourth conviction (in Australia, 2017)

In the Sydney District Court in November 2017, a jury found Bernard McGrath guilty of 64 offences in New South Wales including multiple counts of buggery, homosexual intercourse with a child, detaining a child for advantage, assault, indecent assault and gross indecency.

This trial started in May 2017 and included harrowing evidence from boys who said they were repeatedly brutally raped by McGrath. The trial heard that some boys told their parents but when McGrath was confronted he replied that “Kids make up stories”.

During the 2017 trial, the NSW court placed a non-publication order on this trial, in order to protect the court procedures. This order suppressed McGrath’s name, the name of his order, the name of the boys’ home and its location The suppression order was lifted after the jury returned its verdict.

Jailed in February 2018

In Sydney on 16 February 2018, McGrath (aged 70) was sentenced to 33 years’ jail for 64 offences against 12 boys at Kendall Grange over seven years. McGrath must serve a minimum sentence of 21 years for these victims, and he would be 88 before his earliest release date in 2035, after his sentence was backdated to December, 2014 when he was taken into custody in New Zealand and extradited to Australia to face a number charges. Meanwhile, he was scheduled to face additional charges in court in in Sydney in 2019, meaning that he could be even older than 88 if he gets additional jail time in 2019.

Jailed again in November 2019

During 2019, McGrath was in court again in Sydney, facing a number of additional charges, relating to the Kendall Grange institution. On 18 December 2019, aged 72, he was sentenced to additional time in jail for these victims. McGrath would be aged 97 years when he becomes eligible to apply for release on parole.

Broken Rites is continuing to do research about Brother Bernard McGrath and other SJOG Brothers.