School removes abuser portraits and honours

A top Wellington school has made a major U-turn and removed portraits and other honours of alleged abusive teachers from its walls after a four-year campaign by survivors and their families.

St Patrick’s Silverstream had previously refused to remove the portraits. But after an appearance in October at the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care, the school board decided to take down the honours of four former teachers, all of them priests.

However, other alleged and convicted offenders remain on the walls, such as former head prefect Peter McCormack, defrocked and jailed for four years in 1988 for sexual abuse.

Two of the four whose honorifics were removed were former rectors of the school – Fathers Patrick Minto and Leo Evatt. The portrait of a third former rector, Frank Durning, had already been removed after his four-decade history of abuse was revealed.

The others to have their names redacted are theologian and priest Michael Shirres and former music teacher Alan Woodcock. Woodcock was jailed for seven years in 2004 for 21 offences against 11 boys stretching over 15 years. Shirres, who died in 1997, was a self-confessed repeat offender. Minto, Evatt and Woodcock’s offending was reported on in A Secret History, Stuff’s series on sexual abuse by the Catholic religious groups the Marist Brothers and Fathers.

While the names of Minto, Woodcock and Shirres have been blacked out on a board listing old boys who became priests, that board still mentions McCormack (a student but not a teacher at Silverstream). Minto’s and Evatt’s portraits have been removed from a gallery of former rectors, and plaques with Evatt’s name were also taken down.

But the school has not said if it has removed references to Father Michael Donnelly, against whom the Marist Fathers have upheld two abuse complaints. The portraits of former rectors

Fred Bliss and Vince Curtain, who both failed to prevent Woodcock’s abuse despite receiving complaints from students, also remain on the walls.

Stuff is aware of at least two more names on the boards that have allegations against them.

After telling the commission they did not know if they would remove the honorifics, the Silverstream board decided to remove the names on October 28. But it only this week confirmed that to Murray Heasley, spokesman for the Survivors of Abuse in Faith-based Institutions, after Heasley threatened to lead a deputation to the school.

The removals come after years of campaigning by survivors and their families, particularly the family of the late Pat Cleary, who was abused by Minto at school in the 1950s. Cleary’s daughter, Tina, delivered his testimony posthumously to the royal commission in 2020. He wanted the portraits removed, saying he

found their presentation ‘‘particularly galling, lighting placed as if they were angels, a demeanour of superiority as if they have a direct line to God’’. The Cleary family has twice before unsuccessfully petitioned the school; the Minto family has also written twice in their support.

Tina Cleary said she was grateful for those who had taken action but said: ‘‘How long has the church taken to accept ownership and action healing steps here?’’

The school is owned by the Society of Mary, or Marist Fathers, the Catholic group to which Minto, Woodcock, Evatt and Durning all belonged.

In 2019, Marist Fathers leader Tim Duckworth wrote to a former Silverstream pupil saying he had been asked to remove Minto’s portrait ‘‘based on ... rumour.

‘‘Unless someone comes to us or the police with a credible accusation … Fr Minto is entitled to his good name.’’

‘‘How long has the church taken to accept ownership and action healing steps here?’’ Tina Cleary