Australia: Christian Brother Robert Best convicted of abusing boys at three schools
Request a correction or replyDisposition and response
Material that narrows or disputes the record
Appellate history
2012
Convictions undisturbed.
Record class
Core record
Evidence status
Convicted
Authority role
Christian Brother and teacher
Organization
Congregation of Christian Brothers, St Alipius, Ballarat
Archive classification
This is the archive's application of its published inclusion test. The cited record appears below.
Children committed to or enrolled in the religious institution were under the clergy's combined pastoral, teaching and custodial authority — the mechanism the Royal Commission identified across these institutions.
- Institutional obedience or isolation
- Pastoral or clerical authority
Evidence structure
Proceedings
2011-08-08 · guilty plea, conviction and sentence
County Court of Victoria, Australia. Robert Best pleaded guilty to more than 27 charges of abusing boys as young as eight at three Christian Brothers schools (St Alipius Ballarat, Box Hill, Geelong) and was sentenced to 14 years and 9 months. His appeal did not disturb the convictions.
Documented coercion mechanisms
- teaching authority over primary-school boys
Cited record
Sources
- national broadcaster court reporting sentencing report 'Pedophile Best still a Christian Brother', SBS News (2011).
Reports the guilty plea, the schools involved, and the sentence.
Source provenance
Source access and integrity log
This log records source retrieval and file integrity. It does not mean that an automated process independently confirmed every statement in the source.
- Source and tier basis
- https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/pedophile-best-still-a-christian-brother/tyg7p1kxp Corpus classification: national-broadcaster-court-reporting; evidentiary role: sentencing-report. SHA-256 a0a7ef66cf718d6c30f3502c93e0bdc810903c2970c6082dc55abda02fc55958
- Retrieval
- 2026-07-20 · Preserved
- Bound by Fear automated source-preservation ledger
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Related record
Related cases · Christian institutions & contexts
- 2018 · Harrisburg, PA, USA PA grand jury: 301 priests, 1,000+ child victims documented ('weaponized' faith)
- 2009 · Dublin, Ireland Ryan Commission: abuse 'endemic' in Catholic-run institutions (state inquiry)
- 2021 · Paris, France CIASE/Sauvé Report: est. 216,000 abused by French clergy since 1950
- 2019 · Vatican City McCarrick: ex-cardinal found guilty by Vatican canonical process, laicized
- 2010 · Oregon City, OR, USA Beagley faith-healing death: parents convicted (criminally negligent homicide)
- 2014 · Philadelphia, PA, USA Schaible: 3rd-degree murder, second child dead of untreated pneumonia
- 2001 · London, UK Victoria Climbié: murder convictions; possession belief; Laming Inquiry followed
- 2012 · London, UK Kristy Bamu: kindoki 'deliverance' murder convictions (30/25-yr minimums)