TMCnet News
THE LOST BOYS TELL THEIR TALE(New Zealand Press Association Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)Christchurch, March 16 NZPA - They were the Lost Boys. They had family problems, disabilities, or were just slow to learn, and in the 1970s they found themselves at Marylands School, near Christchurch. Young and vulnerable, they fell prey to Catholic brothers there who used them sexually. One of the brothers was Bernard Kevin McGrath who is now aged 58 and has a prison term behind him for sexual abuse of boys. Thirty years on, the Lost Boys told their stories to the police and the St John of God order which ran the school. The church made pay-outs totalling $5.1 million to those claiming abuse by the various brothers. And McGrath went on trial in Christchurch's High Court nearly four weeks ago. The boys came to court, now grown men struggling to come to terms with the dark corners of their childhoods. They told of recovering flashes of memory. They wept openly in the witness box. Day after day, there were new faces, new disabilities. One had post traumatic stress disorder. Another confidently confirmed his name, but had no idea about his date of birth. They had trouble picking the right faces out of old photographs. They muddled dates and they got details wrong. But the stories they told -- even the more bizarre ones -- seemed to have a compelling sameness about them. Justice Lester Chisholm was careful not to embarrass them when it seemed they could not read the documents passed to them in court. Some hinted at adult lives spent in and out of prison. The defence said they were confused, exaggerating, unreliable and the jury could not trust the stories they told. The Crown said even if the dates and details might be wrong, the stories were basically sound. Some of the charges did not survive the three weeks of evidence and legal argument. But from Monday lunchtime the jury considered the 44 remaining charges. Finally today, the jury said ``guilty'' 21 times. It was a day for eight of the Lost Boys. NZPA WGT cla nb mgr |