St John of God Training Centre, Cheltenham

The St John of God Training Centre was established by the St John of God Brothers in 1953. It housed around 100 boys aged 7 to 16 deemed to have mild intellectual disabilities, including State wards. It was the Brothers’ first institution in the state of Victoria.

An article published by the support group Broken Rites makes the point that

The SJOG Brothers said, blatantly … that their institutions were for “sub-normal” or “retarded” boys. But these words were disparaging. Many SJOG inmates, especially wards of state, had behavioural or learning difficulties and were not necessarily born with an intellectual disability, although they certainly became educationally disadvantaged through their incarceration at St John of God (Broken Rites, “This is how a Catholic religious organisation, the St John of God Brothers, ‘looked after’ disadvantaged boys”).

The St John of God Training Centre occupied the former site of the Methodist Homes for Children in Cheltenham and was approximately 20 acres. The training centre was subsidised by the Mental Hygiene Authority and included a special school on-site. The Brothers of St John of God incurred a debt of 50,000 pounds to purchase the property in 1953.

An article from 1953 reported that the Brothers were renovating the building so that it could accommodate “150 boys of all denominations. There will be three big classrooms and the boys will live in cottages in the 27 acres of ground. They will be given ‘sense training’ by the brothers, who hold general and mental nursing diplomas” (Herald, 6 May 1953). According to The Advocate, 3 brothers travelled down from New South Wales in a utility truck and camped out each night. They had with them 3 boys from Kendall Grange, an institution the Brothers established in 1948. Brother Kilian, the Order’s vice-provincial in Australia, said that the Cheltenham institution would be similar to Kendall Grange, with the boys receiving training in farming, gardening, crafts, basket-making, woodwork, weaving and carpentry (Advocate, 23 April 1953). Another article discussed the drama and music activities at Cheltenham, including a percussion band. When that article was published, there were 70 boys at the Training Centre (Advocate, 19 November 1953).

A visitor to the Training Centre in 1954 described the institution: “The dining-room is most attractive—there are no long tables, which always, I think, create an institutional atmosphere. Instead there are small Laminex-topped tables at each of which four boys sit. The boys help with the tablesetting and the washing-up—the brothers like to encourage them to do as much as they can for themselves”. A former shelter shed had been converted to a concert hall, with a piano and heavy red burlap curtains dividing the stage from the auditorium. This space was also used as a chapel (Advocate, 25 November 1954).

Several investigations have established that residents at St John of God Training Centre, Cheltenham were physically and sexually abused by the Brothers. In 1998, The Age newspaper reported that “for more than 40 years most of the boys in the care of the St John of God order were sexually abused by 14 of the brothers”. The article told the story of Owen, a ward of the state who was sent to Cheltenham at age 10, after being classified as “retarded” because of his poor schoolwork. Owen was sexually abused by brothers at Cheltenham, and at the Brothers’ training farm at Lilydale where he was sent age 16 (Age, 23 May 1998).

According to Broken Rites, almost all boys at Cheltenham boarded there full-time, although some returned to their parents’ or relatives’ homes at weekends. Some residents went from the Training Centre in Cheltenham to Yarra View Training Farm in Lilydale when they got older. St John of God Brothers also moved between Cheltenham and Lilydale and other institutions they ran in Melbourne.

Many former residents who suffered sexual abuse and their family members told their stories to the Royal Commission. Several accounts mentioned boys not wanting to return to the institution after spending weekends at home. For example, Denis would often refuse to return to the Training Centre after weekends spent at home. His family said that on home visits, Denis would wake screaming from nightmares and he often insisted on sleeping under the bed (Carly’s story, Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse).

The institution was named in a submission to the Senate Inquiry into Children in Institutional Care (2004). At the Victorian Inquiry into the handling of child abuse by religious and other non-government organisations, a representative of the Order accepted that that a quarter of the brothers working in St John of God children’s institutions had been the subject of complaints covering the period from the 1960s to the early 1970s (Betrayal of Trust, p.160). Despite the high number of disclosures of abuse at St John of God institutions, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse did not hold a case study into the Order, as public hearings might have prejudiced criminal investigations and prosecutions underway at the time. The Royal Commission’s final report found that, “for Catholic Church authorities with non-ordained religious members, the St John of God Brothers had the highest overall proportion of members who were alleged perpetrators, when taking into account the duration of ministry (40.4 per cent) (Final Report, Volume 16, p.296). It stated that in its analysis of Catholic Church claims data, it found 23 claims of child sexual abuse at the Training Centre in Cheltenham.

In 1966 the Cheltenham site was sold to the retail company Myer and associated interests, and the Brothers prepared to re-establish the Home at Greensborough. The new institution, Churinga, opened in 1967.

The buildings have since been demolished to make way for a shopping centre, and there is a commemorative plaque on the site in Cheltenham that reads:

Southland commemorates the service to children given on this site by Methodist Homes for Children 1892-1953 and the St. John of God Training Centre 1953-1967.