$2.2m verdict after student sexually abused at Shepparton school

Mr Barclay, now 70, brought a civil jury trial in the Melbourne County Court against the trustees to claim for damages for the abuse he was subjected to as a Form 2 student at the then St Colman’s College.

Mr Barclay was only 13 or 14 years old when he was sexually abused by Skehan in Skehan’s bedroom on the school grounds.

Skehan pleaded guilty to the indecent assault against Mr Barclay in a criminal case in 2014 and was sentenced to an eight-month jail term that was suspended for two years.

Skehan has died since then.

According to court documents from Mr Barclay’s legal team, at the time of the sexual assault, Skehan was “employed by, or appointed by and in a relationship that was akin to employment with, the Marist Brothers”.

Mr Barclay’s legal team claimed that the Marists Brothers were “responsible for the care, supervision and control” of Mr Barclay while he was at school.

The Trustees of the Marist Brothers contested the case and the role the Marist Brothers were said to have played in what happened to Mr Barclay.

In the civil case, the jury awarded Mr Barclay $2,248,974 for pain and suffering and for economic loss.

The Trustees of the Marist Brothers were also ordered to pay Mr Barclay’s legal costs.

Speaking after the court case, Mr Barclay was cautiously pleased with the result of his civil court case — but is not counting it as a win just yet as he believes the Trustees of the Marist Brothers may yet appeal the decision.

Mr Barclay said Victorian law changes to get rid of the statute of limitations in sexual assault cases meant he could now bring the case against the Trustees of the Marist Brothers.

“He abused me in 1970. Fifty-six years later we are still trying to tie up loose ends,” he said.

“It has worn me down. I am damaged, but I am not broken by this whole stuff.

“What Skehan did to me altered my life.

“When he sexually abused me, it has changed my life.

“It’s time the Marists accepted responsibility to allow John Skehan to move through schools and abuse children.”

Speaking after the court case had finalised, Mr Barclay’s lawyer Laird Macdonald from Rightside Legal was pleased with the result.

“We say it was a very insightful verdict from the jury,” he said.

“Of course we were pleased to see a survivor go through the process and achieve justice.”

Mr Macdonald said Skehan was on the staff at St Colman’s from 1968 to 1970, but later returned to what had since then become Notre Dame College in 1992, and worked there for two years.

According to documents from Mr Barclay’s legal team, Skehan indecently assaulted a different student at St Colman’s in about 1970, but the defence denied any knowledge of this as it said it had no record of receiving any contemporaneous complaint from any student about this.

Mr Barclay said a big part of having his name published in his story about his court battle was to stop hiding the “big dark secret”.

“As hard as it is (to go through the court process), for me, it’s always been harder to keep the secret Skehan made me keep than to say ‘this is who I am, and what he did’ and to get on with building my life,” Mr Barclay said.

“If me telling my story publicly helps someone else tell their secret, then so be it.”

He paid tribute to his Rightside Legal team, family and friends who had supported him through his court journey over the years.

“I don’t regret this journey with such great friends around me,” he said.

The only thing he wished he could have done differently was to tell his mother what had happened to him as a child, before she died.