A second Catholic priest who served at St Bede's College in Christchurch has been identified as the subject of sexual abuse allegations from three separate complainants across three decades — with complaints lodged in 1996, 2014, and 2023 — and police investigated the first two without taking action.
Fr Brian Cummings, who served as rector of St Bede's from 1990 to 2001 and had taught at the school from as early as 1980, died in 2022 at the age of 68. He denied the allegations in both the 1996 and 2014 instances. Police investigated both complaints. No prosecution proceeded. The third complaint was received in 2023, after his death, and was investigated by the Church.
The Society of Mary, the Catholic religious order to which Cummings belonged, confirmed he had strenuously denied the accusations in 1996 and in 2014. The order confirmed the complaints and their outcomes to RNZ.
The disclosure comes directly in the wake of the recent admission by Fr Rowan Donoghue that he sexually abused four boys at St Bede's during the period 1996 to 2000 — an admission that led to six charges. Donoghue and Cummings were at the school simultaneously. Their tenures overlapped. The school now has two rectors from the same period, at the same institution, who were the subject of sexual abuse allegations.
A Detective Superintendent confirmed that material relating to Cummings had been "handed to the current investigation" — that is, the investigation into Donoghue — indicating police are now examining whether the cases are connected or indicative of a broader pattern at the school.
St Bede's current rector, Jon McDowall, described the allegations as "distressing" and said "any form of abuse is unacceptable," emphasising that the school now operates with "clear safeguarding expectations and strong oversight." That may well be true today. The question the disclosure demands is what was happening during the years the allegations relate to — and how an institution managed to have two of its most senior figures subject to multiple complaints without that pattern triggering any systemic institutional response.
New Zealand's Royal Commission into Abuse in Care, which examined how institutions enabled abuse to continue unchallenged, provides the direct policy context. The Commission's findings documented in exhaustive detail how Catholic institutions and others created conditions in which abusers could operate across years and decades, insulated by institutional loyalty, denial, and inadequate external accountability mechanisms.
The Cummings disclosures fit that pattern with uncomfortable precision. Two police investigations, across 18 years. No prosecution. The subject dies before a third complaint is even received. The institution responds with expressions of regret and assertions about current safeguarding standards.
Mate, let us not lose track of the numbers. Three complainants. Three separate time periods. Two police investigations, neither resulting in charges. Two rectors, overlapping tenures, at the same school, facing abuse allegations. One institution managing the narrative of both.
This is not an isolated incident at St Bede's. It is a pattern. And the accountability question that pattern demands — not just of the individuals involved, who are deceased or facing charges, but of the institution that employed them, supervised them, and responded to complaints about them over 27 years — has not yet been adequately answered.
