Timothy Barlow told the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse on Monday he was forced to apologise in front of the entire school at an assembly and publicly recant sexual abuse allegations he made about paedophile Christian Brother Edward Dowlan, who has since changed his name to Ted Bales.     

Mr Barlow said in 1973 he was elected by his classmates onto the Student Representative Council. After he joined the council he was approached by a student who wanted Dowlan to stop putting his hands down his brother’s pants. He said Dowlan would walk around the handball courts with his hands down the back of boys’ pants. Mr Barlow and other student representatives agreed to report the abuse allegations to their headmaster Brother Paul Nangle. 

Shortly after Mr Barlow reported the allegations, another Christian Brother BARR, who cannot be named for legal reasons, punched him in the back of the head while he was studying in a classroom. Mr Barlow said Dowlan was waiting for him outside the classroom and the two men hauled him down corridor before beating him. As they beat him they told him “you’ll regret this” and called him a “f….g lying p..k”, the inquiry heard.

Br Nangle disbanded the student council because students were using it to “spread scurrilous lies about the Christian Brothers”. Mr Barlow said students abused at the school were unsupported by their peers.

“There was a survival of the fittest environment,” he said. “The kids referred to the boys who were being abused as bum buddies. That probably gives an indication of the low degree of empathy within the student body towards those being abused.” He said it was common knowledge Christian Brothers were “touching boys in the dormitories”.   

“I think we were in a dysfunctional and closed environment where the abnormal was the normal,” he said. “As 15 to 16-year-olds we had no idea of outside codes of ethic, morality and justice.” 

Former student Martinus Claassen told the inquiry he was sexually abused by Dowlan in 1974 for not finishing his homework. “He started stroking my thigh,” he said. “His hand then moved so he was stroking and squeezing my genitals. I remember going to the toilet and crying and vomiting in the cubicle.”

He told his mother about the incident and a meeting was called with Brother Nangle but it left him feeling “demoralised”. He was also molested at St Alipius Christian Brothers Boys School, the inquiry heard.