Marylands School housed disadvantaged, disabled and orphaned boys. No one knew that some of the Catholic brothers caring for them were abusing them regularly. Photo / 123RF
Dozens of innocent boys were sexually abused and assaulted by a group of Catholic brothers charged with caring for them at a Christchurch residential school.
More than 80 former students of Marylands School later came forward and disclosed their abuse and it's likely many more have suffered in silence.
John Borlase grew up near Marylands. He knew the boys. He played sport with them. They were part of his childhood.
He never could have imagined back in those days that as an adult - a cop - he would be tasked with investigating the allegations and prosecuting the offenders.
Borlase is one of many people - including victims - set to give evidence at the ongoing Royal Commission into the abuse of children, young people and vulnerable adults in State and faith-based care in New Zealand.
The Catholic church falls under the Commission's spotlight in February as authorities work to establish the nature and extent of the abuse that occurred at Marylands and two similar institutions.
The Commission is still calling for victims to come forward and say their evidence is crucial and "without hearing the voices of those who have the lived experience of state or faith-based care" they cannot effect change.
Borlase, now retired, sat down with Herald senior journalist Anna Leask to speak about his fight for the Marylands boys - boys who should have been safe but were wronged in the most vile ways.
It all happened right under everyone's noses.
Marylands was a school for the "other" boys - the ones in state care, the ones with no parents, the troubled ones
The Catholics were doing God's work looking after them.
They offered a home, education, and stability.
The community admired their work, and thought the boys were so lucky to have the St John of God brothers in their corner.
What no one knew though was that at least 80 boys at the school were sexually abused by some of the brothers - a core group of men who were supposed to care, nurture and protect but instead took advantage of the vulnerable children, subjecting them to repeated and regular assaults.
John Borlase remembers the school, the boys, the brothers well.
"I grew up in Halswell in the late 50s and early 60s, Marylands was just down the road and it was a big part of the community," Borlase recalled.
"As kids growing up, our parents used to tell us what a good job the brothers were doing there with those 'unfortunate children' they were caring for.
"Being kids, we didn't really know better."
The Marylands boys played rugby and soccer against teams from local Scout groups.
Borlase remembers the tournaments, and fairs and fetes the school put on to make sure the boys were part of the community
"They were great interactions," he said.
"The community were really behind the brothers, the boys.... but underneath, that sleazy stuff was going on."
Borlase grew up, went off to Police College in 1966 and then transferred to Christchurch to work on the front line.
"I can remember getting these runaways from St John of God - they would be out there just committing petty crimes," he said.
"I just put it down to the fact they were the rebellious part of this group I'd been involved with over the years - I thought 'oh they're just scallywags'.
"Some were worse than others and they ended up at the Stanmore Rd boys' homes or at Kingslea School which back then was the next tier up for wayward kids.
"As the boys got a bit older, as their offending got worse they would end up in borstal… of all the boys I dealt with, it was never raised they were being sexually abused at the time.
"And looking back now… they'd been brainwashed… threatened by the brothers that if they told anyone they would be in trouble."
Not all of the brothers were abusers - some were genuinely there to help the children of Marylands and were well liked and trusted by the boys.
But those who crossed the line did it in the most horrendous way.
"Their lives were ruined," said Borlase of the dozens of victims.
"Their lives were shattered... they were just kids, they were threatened and there was nowhere else for them to go."
When you speak about Marylands School in Christchurch, most people shudder.
They know it was a place where boys were hurt, damaged, destroyed.
A place where men who on the surface were holy, wholesome and protecting but who behind the scenes were predators, recidivist sex offenders - criminals.
Marylands was a residential school for boys that operated from the 1950s to 1984 run by the Australian Catholic Order of St John of God.
It opened in 1955 and was initially based at Middleton but moved to a site at Halswell in vacated by the Sisters of the Good Shepherd in the late 1960s.
The boys at Marylands were, by and large, a vulnerable lot.
Most were in state care and many had learning difficulties or disabilities.
Back in the day the community hailed Marylands and admired the men who ran it.
But in the early 90s allegations started to emerge that Catholic brothers at the school had perpetrated prolific sexual abuse of the boys they were supposed to care for.
In 1993 Brother Bernard McGrath was convicted then of offending against a six boys at Marylands and the associated Hebron Trust.
But that was only the beginning.
Police later received more than 120 further allegations against McGrath and fellow brothers Roger Maloney, William Lebler, Lyall Forde and Father Raymond Garchow.
In 2005, following extensive investigations in Christchurch and Australia, the five were charged with a raft of offending against the boys in their care.
Maloney and Garchow were extradited to New Zealand and put before the courts along with McGrath.
Garchow was eventually granted a stay of proceedings because he was too sick to stand trial.
Police fought to extradite Lebler too, but he was found unfit to stand trial due to a severely diminished mental capacity.
In 2008 Maloney was found guilty of seven of 20 charges and jailed for three years.
He served just 13 months behind bars and returned to Australia.
McGrath - born and raised in Christchurch - was considered the "most notorious" of the sex offenders.
The court heard his victims included physically and intellectually challenged, homeless and orphaned boys from Marylands and Hebron and various other places he worked in New South Wales.
He stood trial five times in Christchurch and Australia between 1993 and 2019 on hundreds of charges.
In total he was convicted of more than 150 counts of sexual abuse relating to 48 boys.
He is currently serving a 33-year prison sentence in New South Wales for his years of deviant and destructive abuse.
His image is currently suppressed - an order made in the Christchurch District Court when his extradition was allowed to protect his fair trial rights overseas.
Borlase was the first officer to investigate the widespread abuse at Marylands - not just McGrath but that "core" cohort of "bad brothers".
His retired from police in 2013 after a career spanning almost 48 years and during that time he investigated countless serious crimes but the most significant for him was the Marylands inquiry.
It was in 2002 that the new tranche of complaints started coming in about historic sexual abuse at Marylands.
Over the years, particularly after McGrath's first convictions, there had been allegations and rumours of more widespread abuse.
But it wasn't until after the turn of the century more victims emerged and were ready to disclose.
By then Borlase was based at the Hornby police station by then and in the Criminal Investigation Branch.
"I was given the ongoing file when the first couple of complaints came in - I was trusted with the investigation," he explained.
"There were only a couple initially and then it started to spread amongst the older boys about what was going on and there was some money being paid out by St John of God.
"Paul Holmes heard about it and it was on the Holmes show then from June 2002 to November 2002 the complaints just started to pile up.
"So much so, that it was becoming too much for just one person - it was escalating… It was becoming huge, I was on it full time and it was taking me away from everything else."
Police management met and agreed to throw more resources at the issue and Operation Authority was born.
Borlase was joined by three other detectives and they spent the next 12 months uncovering what the brothers had spent years trying to keep secret.
"Our team of four were initially given six weeks by the bosses to go for it and see what we could find, to see if it warranted ongoing investigation," Borlase said.
"It got bigger and bigger… we were building a picture of life at Marylands the evidence was getting stronger and stronger as to the authenticity of the complaints."
As the case snowballed, the Operation Authority team got permission to go to Australia and speak to some of the victims, the brothers who worked at Marylands at the time of the abuse and the three offenders who had left New Zealand.
They spent three weeks working every hour they could find to interview men in Sydney, up the coast towards Brisbane and in Western Australia.
The head of the St John of God order Brother Peter Burke helped the Kiwi investigators, allowing them access to records that helped to further corroborate the allegations.
"It further reassured us that what our victims was saying was the truth," said Borlase.
"It was a real challenge, it was like a million piece jigsaw puzzle you're trying to put together… we did put it all together."
Borlase spent countless hours interviewing victims, drawing out the most heartbreaking and harrowing details from men who had spent most of their lives trying to forget what was done to them at Marylands.
"Some of the guys I interviewed were guys I'd locked up when they were younger," he said.
"When I was interviewing one of them he said 'John, know you know why I pinched bikes, why I did burglaries, why I ran away from Marylands.
"It wasn't because I was bad, it was because of the abuse.
"Realising what had been going on was… emotionally, pretty hard going… heartbreaking stuff."
Borlase said the men confided in him that the abuse had deeply impacted their sexuality and made it almost impossible for them to have healthy adult relationships.
They were sad, angry, hurt that the brothers had taken away their chance to be happy - to feel normal.
The brothers did not discriminate in their foul abuse, they targeted orphans, the disabled, the mentally unwell and unstable.
No boy was safe at Marylands.
"I'll never forget it," Borlase said of the investigation
"It was mentally exhausting. I classed myself as pretty tough - I was an investigator, I had a job to do.
"But this was totally different to anything else… we'd worked on homicides and all sorts but this one was emotional because it went on for so long and unearthing all this historical abuse and hearing how it affected the victims and how it messed up their lives - that's what got to us."
Borlase admired, respected and commended the strength of the victims who disclosed their abuse.
He said they were often relieved after sharing, simply because someone was "finally prepared to sit down and take notice of them".
Some had told their parents or family and were not believed.
Some told their parents and the issue was raised with the school - promises were made things would be sorted out but everything was swept under a hefty rug.
McGrath was moved on every time an accusation was made, enabling him access to new boys and allowing him to keep offending.
That has always infuriated Borlase and to this day it makes him emotional.
The impact on innocent children. The fact that the abuse could have and should have been stopped so much earlier.
"McGrath was shipped off to start again," he said
"He was allowed to keep on doing it because they didn't take the appropriate steps to deal with him."
Borlase and the Operation Authority team worked long and hard to build the strongest case against the offenders.
No stone was left unturned and even when the Catholic Church tried to swerve, avoid, duck for cover and even at times appeared to try and protect the sexually deviant brothers, the Kiwi cops pushed back.
When the charges came, they were stoked.
When the convictions came, they were beyond proud.
"The victims were rapt," said Borlase.
"It was bloody tough."
Some of the victims cases did not make it to court and charges relating to others ended in acquittals.
Borlase said it was excruciating explaining both of those outcomes to men who had trusted the Operation Authority team with their deepest secrets, their biggest hurts and their darkest shames.
The detectives worked hard to ensure the men - all of them- knew they had been believed.
"Some of them agonised over that," said Borlase.
"And the Lebler outcome... that was so infuriating.
"When he was not extradited, the victims were extremely upset - knowing that he wasn't going to stand trial... it certainly disappointed us as investigators as well.
"Some of the survivors didn't get their day in court, they didn't get the closure they had been seeking for so long."
The Catholic Church paid out more than $5 million in compensation to about 80 former Marylands students.
Most would have assumed that and the prosecution of the abusers was the end of the story.
But in 2018 the government announced the Royal Commission - and that one of the investigations under its umbrella would be the horrors behind the doors of Marylands School.
The investigation will gather information about "what happened, why it happened, and the impacts of abuse that may have occurred at the hands of priests, religious or lay employees of the Church".
And it will investigate whether there are any "systemic, structural, institutional or other factors special to the Church which contributed to the abuse occurring" or which affected a response to the abuse.
Survivors of abuse at Marylands and two connected facilities will give evidence at a six-day public hearing starting in February.
Borlase will be part of the process in one way or another and had prepared a lengthy evidential statement for the Commission.
He is an expert on the case, after all, and still dedicated to ensuring justice for the victims.
"If they get to the nuts and bolts of it all and can life a better place for the future generations, to protect them from this behaviour - it will all be worth it," he said.
"Things are going to change, hopefully for the better."
The Royal Commission wants to hear from anyone impacted by the abuse at Marylands School - at the hands of priests, religious or lay employees of the Church.
Evidence from survivors of the abuse will help the Commission establish the drivers and breadth of the abuse.
In 1984 the Ministry of Education took over and it became Hogben School, a state school for intellectually impaired students.
It is now known as Halswell Residential College.
Click here to read more about the investigation.
"If you are a victim or survivor of abuse at Marylands School and you want to share your story with us, please get in touch," said a Commission spokesperson.
"We would like to hear from you whether or not you had any involvement with criminal prosecutions following a police investigation in the 2000s into abuse of children at Marylands and St John of God, and whether or not you have already received compensation or redress from St John of God.
"If you have family or whānau who suffered abuse at Marylands School, or you witnessed abuse at the school as a visitor or staff member, your account is also very important to this investigation.
"These accounts, combined with those of many other victims and survivors of abuse in the care of the Catholic Church, at Marylands or elsewhere, will help the Royal Commission to make findings about what happened and why, and any appropriate recommendations for change."
If you have information you want to share about abuse at Marylands School in Christchurch then please call the Commission confidentially on 0800 222 727 email contact@abuseincare.org.nz or write to Royal Commission of Inquiry, PO Box 10071, Wellington 6140.
Full contact details can be found here: https://www.abuseincare.org.nz/contact-us/
So far over 900 survivors have shared their story of abuse in care.
The inquiry's findings are due in 2023.
"We cannot make any findings, reach conclusions or make recommendations without hearing the voices of those who have the lived experience of state or faith-based care," said the spokesperson.
If it's an emergency and you feel that you or someone else is at risk, call 111.
If you've ever experienced sexual assault or abuse and need to talk to someone contact the Safe to Talk confidential crisis helpline on:
• Text 4334 and they will respond
• Email support@safetotalk.nz
• Visit https://safetotalk.nz/contact-us/ for an online chat
Alternatively contact your local police station - click here for a list.
If you have been abused, remember it's not your fault.
Johnson suffered critical injuries after he was hit on a pedestrian crossing.