SHOCKING REVELATIONS.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume X, Issue 514, 16 February 1883, Page 5

SHOCKING REVELATIONS.

(From the Melbourne Advocate.) Thebe has been another shocking revelation in connection with btate school, whose teacher was lately found drowned. Serious charges of immorality had been preferred against him, and he refused to attend an investigation into them. But the result of the inquiry lett no doubt upon the minds of a detective, of Mr. Bolam, the inspector, or of the gentlemen who had conducted it, but that the suspended teacher had gravely abused the confidence that had been reposed in him, and had in several cases debauched those whose virtue he should have protected. The Age gives a history of the case. but it is one that we cannot transfer to our columns, though, for an object that may be readily understood, we refer to matters about which we are usually silent. But if we cannot give particulars, we may at least say that the disclosures represent a condition of things so bad that we have never met with a parallel to it even in the very worst accounts of immorality in connection with the secular schools of New York. The worst feature in the case is that the villany remained unexposed for a long time, and that the innocent children of honest and virtuous parents were day after day in the charge of people who had successfully plotted and were plotting against the chastity of their pupils. We should be sorry to raise the veil which conceals from the public the anguish and shame which are to families the bitter consequences of the unbridled lust which too late was discovered. Through a consideration for the victims we even refrain from mentioning place or names, but without a betrayal of trust we could not omit all reference to the case, repulsive- though it is. It may be that not even the shocking exposures in this case will excite fear and solicitude in the hearts of Catholic parents who are still sending their children to State schools. It may be that not till the poisoned arrow has pierced their own hearts, and till they are weep* ing over that death in life which has been brought into other house* holds, will they heed the waraing of the Church and do their duty ; but we have, nevertheless, to acquit ourselves of the solemn obliga« tions imposed upon us by the late shocking revelations. Their loath, some character is so calculated to strike terror into the heart of the Catholic mother, we could almost wish that we were relieved from the obligation of dealing reservedly with the case ; but, as we may not take that liberty, we can only say that the particulars realise the very worst that was predicted of the secular schools in this Colony. We never doubted but that they would be productive of the evils of which similar schools elsewhere are prolific, and our worst fears are now, unhappily, realised.