White European men keep abusing children and the church keeps covering it up
I am regularly told I am too harsh on certain ethnicities for pointing out patterns of behaviour. That I should be more careful. More measured. Less blunt…
When it comes to churches and the sexual abuse of children in this country, one pattern is impossible to ignore. Again and again, it is white European men, embedded in church hierarchies, who end up exposed in courtrooms years after the damage is done. That is not racism. It is reality.
There may be no single, tidy dataset spelling it out, but the evidence is everywhere. Decades of reporting. Historical abuse cases. Name suppression lifting one by one. The same demographics. The same institutions. The same excuses. The headlines make my point obvious.
The churches that once demanded unquestioned authority have instead produced an endless procession of offenders and enablers. European men placed on pedestals, shielded by collars, titles and deference, operating inside systems that prized reputation over accountability.
The latest name to surface is Rowan Donoghue. His case matters not because it is unique, but because it is depressingly familiar.
Donoghue admitted to sexually abusing children nearly 20 years before his conviction. He did not confess in court. He confessed to leaders within his own religious order. He acknowledged guilt. The response from the church was not to call police. They sent him to Australia.
A six-month programme. “Risk assessment.” “Therapy.” Corporate-style language masking a moral collapse. Another white bloke who admitted abusing children was quietly removed from sight, not handed over to authorities.
Four boys were abused while boarding at St Bede’s College. Four children placed in the care of men who preached discipline, obedience and moral order. When one of their own admitted what he had done, the institution chose secrecy.
For generations, European men in church leadership have operated inside closed systems built on trust, hierarchy and silence. Complaints were minimised. Victims were doubted. Offenders were moved. The public was kept in the dark. All of it was justified under the banner of protecting the church.
The same script has played out across countries and denominations. New Zealand is no exception. The accent may change, the school uniform may differ, but the power structure remains recognisably European, male and insulated from scrutiny.
When exposure finally comes, so do the apologies. Statements about being “deeply disturbed”. Expressions of sorrow. Promises that “things are different now”. But those words arrive only after courts intervene and reputations are already in tatters.
Rowan Donoghue is responsible for his crimes. But he did not operate alone. He was protected by people who knew better and chose silence anyway.
Calling this out is not an attack on faith. It is an attack on institutional cowardice. On a culture that allowed these men in positions of moral authority to police themselves, and fail catastrophically.
If churches want to rebuild trust, they need to stop pretending these are isolated incidents or unfortunate relics of the past. They are patterns. Until those patterns are named honestly, nothing really changes.
Because children were not the priority. The institution was. And that, more than anything else, is why the public no longer believes the church when it says “never again”.
