The Christian Brothers has no future unless the order confronts the devastation caused by child sexual abuse, says one of its most senior officials, amid revelations the congregation has spent $21 million in compensation claims.
Julian McDonald, the deputy provincial leader for the Christian Brothers Province of Oceania, on Tuesday told the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse that victims were being "chopped up" by lengthy litigation.
"I said at the recent Christian Brothers chapter in Nairobi: 'There's no future for the Christian Brothers until we address the devastation that some of our brothers have caused by child sexual abuse - no future unless and until we do that,'" he said.
He said he has told religious leaders "not to go the way of litigation".
"My concern is the people who were chopped up in the process - whose lives had been messed up because of what happened to them way back there then, and who were now, in one sense, being re-abused by this whole process," he said.
The commission heard that between January 1980 and June 2013 the order received 775 complaints of sexual, physical or psychological abuse, from more than 500 people.
The Christian brothers spent almost $21 million compensating the vast majority of those claimants, at an average of $50,000 each.
In the mid-1990s, the order settled multiple abuse allegations in WA for a total of $5 million - a figure offered by the Christian Brothers in response to victims' opening position of $30 million.
Brother McDonald said law firm Slater and Gordon, which represented the survivors of abuse at four WA Christian Brothers residences, must have been satisfied by the $5 million amount if they agreed to it.
Last week, Slater and Gordon partner Hayden Stephens described the negotiation process as the order having its "foot on the throat" of the former residents.
The commission also heard the Catholic order's leadership documented physical and sexual abuse complaints against 70 brothers across the country between 1919 and 1969.
One of those brothers, known as Brother Parker, admitted to his superiors he struggled with the order's "second vow" of celibacy when he taught at St Joseph's Farm and Trade school, Bindoon, in 1953.
A visitation report from the time said Brother Parker was "still beset by his own inner troubles about which he spoke with complete candour".
"The second vow has long been of difficulty for him. No individual is involved ... in his own interests his contact with the boys ought to be reduced," the report said.
The order's former provincial leader for WA and SA, Brother Anthony Shanahan, said it was likely Brother Parker was left to his own devices to manage his conduct himself.
The commission last week heard Brother Parker was moved from Bindoon to Tasmania.
The commission also heard a 1947 visitation report to Bindoon found it was "never fitted out as a school and was never intended to take boys who should really be under a woman's care".
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