The man who caused 'irrevocable damage' in the 'local Catholic community and the greater Hunter'

Francis Cable, also known as Brother Romuald, in the middle back row. Judge Whitford said even in incidents without violence or expressed threats, "there was always an implicit threat which resided in the disparity between the offender and the victim, in terms of their age, and size and authority".

THE boy was just 13 when he started at a Marist Brothers school in the Hunter and met his technical drawing teacher Brother Romuald, real name Francis Cable.

The abuse started when Cable asked the boy - whose widowed father struggled to raise him and his siblings - to stay behind after class. Cable put his hands inside the boy's underpants and fondled his genitals.