Warning: This story discusses sexual abuse and child sex offending.
A man who was abused at the Catholic Marylands School in Christchurch says child sex offender Brother Bernard McGrath once showed him a corpse to silence him from speaking out.
The account was revealed during the Royal Commission's Abuse in Care inquiry.
Marylands abuse survivor Donald Ku started at the school just before his 10th birthday. It was at the school, run by the Brothers of the St John of God, that he says sexual abuse became normalised.
McGrath, his abuser, did his best to stop Ku from ever talking to outsiders about it and showed him a corpse at a hospital morgue.
"He just said, 'You're going to end up like that', and that's all he said. And I didn't know what he meant but I saw a dead body there and he wasn't talking about anyone else but me," Ku says.
McGrath, who's in jail for his crimes, offended against dozens of boys. When church leaders were told of the abuse, McGrath was shifted overseas.
"I believe the Church covered it up, yeah," Ku says.
A total of 537 boys, many with disabilities, attended the school. Of these, 144 reported abuse, although the Commission heard that was likely the "tip of the iceberg".
There were 42 brothers, and 21 had abuse complaints against them. Reports of sexual abuse against brothers in New Zealand was higher than the institution in Australia.
The Catholic Church spoke of how they viewed McGrath.
"As one of Australiasia's worst child sex offenders… this is deeply shameful to the Catholic Church and it should never have happened," says Sally McKechnie, the Catholic Church's lawyer:
But it did happen and it continued over decades - and during this time, Marylands benefited from Government funding. But the perpetrators also benefited from the lack of oversight from both the Church and the State.
Survivor advocate Ken Clearwater has been helping victims of abuse for 25 years and believes Marylands was among the worst of the Catholic institutions.
"I think Marylands is definitely at the top in relation to the whole culture there of fear," Clearwater says.
And understanding why that culture of fear and abuse was allowed to prevail for so long is part of what the Commission wants to unravel.
