The recent announcement by the Trustees of the Christian Brothers that they intend to wind up their operations and seek Court approval for a proposed Creditors’ Scheme of Arrangement is significant and concerning for victims and survivors of institutional abuse. You can read the official announcement here.

The proposed Scheme is intended to facilitate the orderly distribution of the Trustees’ remaining property, funds and assets to creditors, including victims and survivors of abuse by Members of the Congregation.

Since the announcement, the NSW Supreme Court last week, on Thursday, 2 July 2026 granted the Trustees of the Christian Brothers a moratorium on civil claims nationally, while the proposed Court-supervised creditors’ scheme progresses. In practical terms, this means current civil claims against the Christian Brothers may now be paused while the Court-supervised process continues. The ABC has reported that this ruling has left victims and survivors “thrown into uncertainty”, and you can read their article here.

We are concerned about the precedent this may set for other institutions with responsibility for compensating victims and survivors of abuse. Survivors should not be placed at further risk of delay, uncertainty or disadvantage because of insolvency processes or corporate restructuring.

For survivors, however, this is not merely a legal or insolvency process. It is deeply personal. The proposed Scheme could potentially impact hundreds of people who are seeking justice for childhood sexual abuse, many of whom have already waited years, and in some cases decades, to be heard, believed and compensated for the harm done to them as children.

Survivors have expressed that they feel as though their suffering has been reduced to a line item in an insolvency process.

For many, this announcement feels like yet another painful blow in a long and difficult journey to be believed, acknowledged and heard. Having already endured the trauma of childhood abuse, and the additional burden of seeking accountability, survivors should not now be left feeling that their experiences are being minimised or that justice is again being placed further out of reach.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse documented, in damning detail, the ways in which institutions too often delayed, denied and failed to properly respond to survivors.

Any process that now affects survivors’ rights to pursue justice must be transparent, carefully scrutinised and centred on the people who were harmed. Institutional accountability cannot be displaced by financial or corporate restructuring.

We support the Australian Lawyers Alliance’s commitment to standing with survivors. You can read the ALA’s comments here. We also acknowledge the work being undertaken across the plaintiff legal community to ensure the best possible outcomes for survivors affected by this announcement.

Survivors deserve clear information, trauma-informed support and a process that recognises the profound and lifelong impact of childhood abuse.

This process must not become another mechanism by which survivors are delayed, diminished or denied justice.

Anyone affected by the proposed Scheme, including survivors with current or potential claims involving the Christian Brothers, should seek legal advice about their individual circumstances.