24 Sep 2018

Priest's sexual abuse at Upper Hutt school admitted

From Morning Report, 7:16 am on 24 September 2018

The Marist Fathers have admitted to "criminal" child sex abuse by a priest who led one of their top secondary schools. But decades on they still won't release the file on Francis Durning, rector of St Patrick's College in Silverstream, Upper Hutt, in the 1950s. He is publicly remembered in Catholic obituaries as a priest of "profound integrity". But one victim says other clergy nicknamed him "Fred the Fiddler" for his habit of abusing boys.