My Marist education haunted me for decades

Saturday, 18 July 2026

Andrew Johnstone is a Waikato man with a farming background.

OPINION: I was educated by Marist Brothers and saw first hand just how bad they could be. By the time I finished my high schooling, I had nothing good to say about them. Sacred Heart College was an experience that would haunt me until I was well into my forties.

By my fifties, I thought I had largely come to terms with those years until I heard about the death of Brother Bosco (Kenneth Camden).

Jailed for sexual offences in 1990, Camden had been the principal at Sacred Heart College during my years there, and if there was ever a person unsuited for authority, he was the one.

At Camden’s 2014 funeral, Richard Dunleavy, one of the Brothers charged with investigating abuse allegations at the time, gave an admiring, almost reverential eulogy that omitted any mention of his offences, a response I experienced as just another tone deaf act in a long list of tone deaf acts the Brothers had been perpetuating since the scale of their historic abuse started to become apparent in the early-2000s.

After contacting the Marists and the school in a fruitless attempt to encourage a little more respect for Camden’s victims (both known and unknown), I felt my anger returning and not wanting to go down that path again, I realised I had to do something I’d been avoiding - I had to confront the past and make it right.

Making a formal complaint was not something I ever thought I’d do and it was way harder than I’d anticipated. By the end of it I was emotionally exhausted and I told the investigator that I wanted no further contact with the Office of National Standards, the body that oversees the Catholic Church’s response to complaints of abuse and misconduct. No results, no apologies, no recompense…. Nothing.

In March I received an email telling me that the investigation had been concluded and if I ever changed my mind about things, it was available for me to see.

Three years had passed since my initial complaint, and by this stage I was feeling quite different about things, so I requested a copy. News that my complaint had been upheld felt like the curtains had been thrown open and light had flooded into the room.

As part of the redress process, I requested a meeting with the head of the NZ Marist Brothers and on my mother’s behalf, I also agreed to a meeting with a facilitator from the Office of National Standards, and this is when it stopped being about just me.

Mum wanted to talk to someone about her own experience of those times - knowing that something was wrong but not knowing why, it had been an anxious and stressful time that she’d never been able to resolve. It did us both a world of good to bring it all out into the open.

A few weeks ago my meeting with the head of the Marist Brothers was confirmed and I set about putting my thoughts in order. This involved a lot of research and I was surprised to learn that most offenders from the Catholic clergy and religious orders do not meet the diagnostic criteria for pedophilia or ephebophilia. The offending, as it turned out, was more to do with opportunity, emotional immaturity, poor boundaries, misuse of authority and entitlement.

As I arrived at the meeting, I realised that I didn’t want to be there. Through the process of reading and reflecting, I’d basically answered all my own questions and my anger had burned itself out. But I was committed and had to see it through.

The Marist Brothers arrived in NZ in 1838 and opened their first school in 1876. The order had been founded in 1817 by Marcellin Champagnat, a French Catholic priest who abhorred corporal punishment and believed education should be about kindness, encouragement and care.

By 1900, the NZ Marist Brothers were already well known as harsh disciplinarians and by the early 2000s, the order had drifted so far from the ideals of their founder that they were Marist in name only. They were also wealthy, powerful and respected and it might have stayed that way if they’d taken a different approach to the abuse allegations.

As the scale of historic offending started coming to light, the Brothers, desperate to protect their reputation, responded with denial, obfuscation, excuses and victim blaming, all of which only served to inflame the situation.

By the time the Royal Commission into Abuse in Care wrapped up in 2024, the Brothers, whose muddled testimony had done them few favours, were whipped and beaten, their reputation in tatters, their legacy squandered.

In 2026, the remaining NZ Marist Brothers are elderly and limping toward oblivion and the man sitting across from me represented the last days of a long story. As I looked over at him, I wondered about the emotional burden he was carrying. “It’s not about me,” he said, missing the point of empathy.

I left the meeting feeling sad and dispirited. Despite the efforts of a few good people, the church and its congregation are still largely in denial about the scale of the abuse, while many more refuse to believe it happened at all. It’s been a fractious process, and the church appears to have drawn few lasting lessons from the experience.

Disappointment aside, the outcome was largely positive. I’ve grown as a person and my understanding of human nature has deepened, but mostly it’s been about the liberating experience of forgiveness. A profound weight has been lifted from my heart, and for that I am exceedingly grateful.