Paul Francis Keeney emigrated from Ireland to Australia early in the last century, around 1911. He went to Perth and some years after his arrival he decided to become a Christian Brother. If you had read his story you would have been really impressed – he was awarded an MBE in the 1950s and there was a big statue erected for him outside of Perth.
According to the legend on that statue he was referred to as ‘the orphan’s friend’ and that he had ‘devoted his life’ to the orphans. And the big inscription read: KEENEY – THE BUILDER.” He had built two orphanages.
An Irish success story on a foreign land, something to be proud of. Well that’s the official story as was written at that time.
One day in 1999 I walked around an orphanage in Perth with a guy who had been in one of the orphanages run by the Christian Brothers and I got the real story.
Brother Paul Francis Keeney was a sadist and a paedophile. He ran forced labour camps at Tardun and Bindoon in Western Australia where young orphans who often lay on urine soaked mattreses were forced to work in their bare feet in the boiling sun for long hours and with little food. While officially they were supposed to be provided with education that rarely happened; he had them out working to get the buildings erected. And, for the record, there was little, if any, follow up when one of them died as quite a few did.
But it was his sadism and perversion that really wreaked havoc.
I was told that one day a wee boy was deemed not to be working hard enough so Keeney, who always carried a stick, rammed the pointed end up his backside in a fit of anger. As he withdrew the stick he pulled out the innards of the wee boy’s anus. He simply walked away. But for the fact that several of the young lads had seen a vet treat a cow with a similar problem God knows what would have happened. This is a verified story.
And of course there was the usual stripping naked of boys before they were whipped in front of the assembled throng; it was allegedly to teach them a lesson but it was much more like a source of sexual thrill for Keeney. It also became know that he facilitated widespread paedophilia.
All this is now on the record after major investigations into the orphanages by Australian authorities in the noughties.
In recent days some people have been getting very exercised about statues of folks from several centuries ago; it’s not personal to them, it’s an issue for discussion. For my friend it was very personal. That statue with the inscription KEENEY: THE BUILDER was an affront to his very being. For him it was not something for a discussion around the table with a glass of wine and cheese and crackers but something visceral that had to be addressed.
In 2016 the Christian Brothers quietly dismantled his ornate marble statue and moved his remains to another place such was the hatred for him when the true facts became known to the public.
Statues are not just cold inanimate objects, are they?
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