On Tuesday afternoon the College will take the momentous step of officially apologising to those victims as part of the school’s journey to providing practical support to victims at the Sturt Street campus. 

The occasion will also mark the official opening of the school’s reflective garden and monument, Ballarat’s first permanent structure acknowledging he abuse.   

For sexual abuse survivor Phil Nagle, the statement will cap off a turnaround in his relationship with the college which stretches back to the late 1970s.  

The survivor will take to the microphone at the event on Tuesday afternoon, joined by headmaster John Crowley as well as the current crop of student leaders.

Mr Nagle had suffered at the hands of the Christian Brothers while a student at the nearby St Alipius Christian Brothers Boys School and while the abuse was unspoken, he was aware his new school was the home of the perpetrators.

“In the 1970s for me St Pat’s was a very scary place because I was in a dorm with 40-odd boys with a Christian Brother as the dorm master,” Mr Nagle said of his time as a boarder.  

“We're all pretty scared, because you didn't want any of the other kids to think anything had or was happening to you, but none of us talked about it.”  

Unsurprisingly, for more than 20 years Mr Nagle refused to go near the college.  It was not until 2015 when the school’s three student leaders published an open letter in The Courier that his opinion of the school began to change.   

The letter was published at the beginning of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse hearings in Ballarat, where Mr Nagle was among those to testify.  He quickly reached out to Mr Crowley in order to get in contact with the young men. 

“I had a genuine hatred for the place from 1980 to 2015 when those young kids wrote that letter,’ Nagle said of the Saturday morning when he first read the statement.  

“That was the first sign of St Pat’s really being on the front foot and acknowledging that they regret that this has happened.

“But once you start something like this you've got to follow through with actions, because you don't want to be measured on your mistakes, you want to be measured on what you do about them.”

Fellow survivors Andrew Collins and Peter Blenkiron recalled a similar relationship with the school which housed some of the country’s most notorious paedophile clergymen. 

Both recalled their deeply troubled association with the College prior to the school board’s decision to reach out to survivors under previous headmaster Dr Peter Casey.  

The pair joined Mr Crowley on the trip to Canberra earlier this month for the formal apology from Edmund Rice Education Australia, the college’s governing body.   

While full of praise for the College’s recent approach to dealing with its dark past, the pair insist the actions to provide tangible support for victims of sexual abuse will ultimately be what the school is measured on.   

“From religious people in the past we’ve heard just words and unfortunately they really mean nothing, but for John to acknowledge what’s happened in the past and take ownership of that is really important,” Mr Collins said. 

“It’s about having the difficult conversations around what can be done which could be as simple as having a groundskeeper come out to mow a lawn, it might be if a survivor from the school needs help in a civil or criminal action that they show full support and go along with them,” Mr Blenkiron said.  

While for some their experiences at St Pat’s will prove too traumatic to ever return, Mr Crowley said he hoped the symbolic gesture would prove the school’s desire to be a part of the solution. 

St Patrick’s College headmaster John Crowley has pledged that Tuesday’s formal apology to the victims of sexual abuse will not be the final step in the school’s attempts to mend relationships with sexual abuse survivors.

Mr Crowley has consulted with survivors regularly since taking the top job in 2015 who have helped to shape the language of the apology.   

Speaking ahead of the event, Mr Crowley said the school would be working hard to ensure relationships were continued to be formed with survivors and their families and that practical support would be offered. 

The school has employed an alumni officer in charge of linking past students in need with support from fellow old boys and will focus on assisting sexual abuse survivors.  

“As a school where abuse has occurred we recognise the need to apologise, be we also recognise the need for action to accompany that,” Mr Crowley said.  “(Practical support) might be mowing someones lawns, it might be using the old boy network to provide accounting services or medical help.”