Broken Rites supported these orphanage victims but a bishop supported the offender
When Broken Rites launched its national telephone
hotline in September 1993, our first callers included former inmates of a
Catholic orphanage (St Joseph's Home, at Neerkol, near Rockhampton, Queensland). Some of these callers said they were sexually assaulted by Father Reg Durham,
who was the "chaplain" at this orphanage from 1965 to 1997. We referred
these callers to an appropriate unit of the Queensland Police, and this
resulted in Father Reg Durham being jailed in 1999 for child sex
crimes. In 2015, Australia's national child-abuse Royal Commission is
holding a public hearing in Rockhampton into child-abuse at this
orphanage.
