Former Marist College teacher and convicted child molester Brother Kostka Chute will spend the next two years behind bars after an ACT judge sentenced him for abusing six students during the 1980s.
Kostka, 76, pleaded guilty in February this year to 19 counts of indecently touching the boys between 1985 and 1989, when they were aged between 12 and 16.
In the ACT Supreme Court this morning, Kostka sat with his head bowed as Justice Malcolm Gray condemned the abuse as a gross breach of trust.
The judge said several character references from friends and former colleagues had to be viewed in the context of Kostkas offences.
"Such testimonials are not irrelevant to my approach but must be weighed against the gross breach of trust that you perpetrated," Justice Gray said.
"That trust which was reposed in you as a teacher of young children and as their custodian in place of their parents as well as that trust reposed in you as a representative of your religious order."
Justice Gray sentenced Kostka to a total of six years jail. However, only the first two years will be full-time prison. The third year will be served by weekend detention, and the remaining three years have been fully suspended.
Although Kostka pleaded guilty to 19 individual incidents, most of the charges were representative of years of daily abuse. Justice Gray said he had taken into consideration that the admitted charges were not isolated offences.
Kostka taught at Marist College in Pearce between 1976 and 1992, having joined the religious order at the age of 11. Justice Gray said he took into consideration the fact that Kostka had been sexually abused himself between the ages of 11 and 13, but added this did not excuse his conduct. Neither did the evidence from his psychiatrist, Dr Chris Canaris, that Kostkas sexual behaviour had been compulsive.
"Although Dr Canaris referred to what you were doing as compulsive sexual behaviour, unlike many other compulsions or addictions, your conduct involved vulnerable victims and is inevitably harmful to persons other than the person engaging in the behaviour," the Judge said.
Marist Brothers is also facing dozens of civil claims for compensation from alleged victims of Kostka, some of whom allege Kostka was abusing them as early as the 1970s.