THE Christian Brothers’ Oceania Province, which includes Australia, has won a court moratorium on all current and future civil sexual-abuse claims, while it seeks court permission to create a creditors’ scheme for sexual-abuse survivors.

If the scheme is not approved — the hearing is set down for September — the Order will have to go into liquidation. In either outcome, the Order will then cease to exist in Australia.

The decision, by the Supreme Court of New South Wales, has thrown continuing sexual-abuse cases into chaos and caused dismay among sexual-abuse survivors; there are more than 240 claimants and prospective claimants.

The Order told the court that it could not meet the claims of sexual survivors, and, if the scheme was approved, it would sell off its remaining 36 properties, worth an estimated $A216 million.

The proceeds will be divided among survivors and creditors, besides providing care for the remaining 176 Brothers, whose average age is 81.

The Order has already paid out $A480 million in compensation and associated costs between 1980 and 2015. The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, which met between 2014 and 2017, recorded more than 1,000 complaints concerning the Order — more than any other Roman Catholic entity that it examined.

Court documents revealed that the Order’s appeals to the Vatican and other Roman Catholic entities for financial assistance had failed. It has also emerged, however, that the Order has transferred valuable properties, including leading private schools, to Edmund Rice Education Australia, an entity that the Order created in 2007. Some estimates suggest that property worth more than $A800 million was transferred for peppercorn amounts. Edmund Rice Education has declined to offer the Order financial support.

The barrister representing the Commonwealth of Australia in the court hearing, Sera Mirzabegian SC, said that the Commonwealth was concerned “whether those transfers were appropriate”. They raised more questions than answers, as there appeared to be discrepancies in the records, she said.