FORMER Marist Brothers Hamilton headmaster Brother Christopher Wade has been found guilty of child sex offences against a Marist Hamilton student in the mid 1970s, and a second student at a Kogarah Marist school from 1977.
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Brother Christopher – real name William Henry Wade, 78 – pleaded not guilty to indecently assaulting the boys while headmaster at both schools, but was found guilty of the offences on Wednesday after a judge-alone trial before Sydney District Court Judge David Arnott.
“I was in year 8 and I was sick so my teacher told me to go the principal’s office so my parents could be contacted,” said Wade’s Hunter victim.
“A lady ushered me into his office and he called me darling and told me to sit on his knee. Then the abuse occurred. He’s the principal and he’s supposed to be the main protector, but he did that.”
After the guilty verdicts the former Marist Hamilton student said it was “Great to see that justice can still be done after all this time.”
Wade was deputy headmaster at Marist Brothers Hamilton from 1969 and became headmaster in 1970. He left the Hamilton school in 1976 to take up the Kogarah position.
He made his vows in 1955 after joining the Marist Brothers when he was 17. He taught English at Marist schools at Parramatta, Lidcombe (1957-59), Hunters Hill (1960-61), Eastwood (1962-64), Marcellin College Randwick (1965-68), Kogarah and Queensland’s Marist College at Ashgrove from 1983.
Wade will be sentenced in September.
He has entered not guilty pleas to four unrelated charges of knowingly making false statements to police and perverting the course of justice. He was charged in February. The charges are linked to statements he made to Strike Force Georgiana police investigating child sex allegations involving two other Marist Hamilton Brothers, and for the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.
The matter will return to court in July.
In a statement after the convictions Marist Brothers Australia expressed “profound regret at the events that have taken place” and extended the order’s “deep sorrow”.
“The charges to which he has today been found guilty represent a profound breach of trust,” the statement said.
“To the victims and their families we hope that the legal process that has delivered these verdicts brings some comfort and healing. We will issue a further statement on these matters once the sentencing process has been completed.”
