“Big brother was always watching you.” This is how a former student recalled Redfield College, the Opus Dei-linked Sydney school that has featured the Independent Commission Against Corruption’s inquiry into secret political donations.

Four targets in ICAC’s Operation Rosny – Robert Assaf, Jeremy Greenwood and Jean-Claude and Charles Perrottet – received their Catholic education at Redfield before starting their activities with the Reformers, a Christian activist group in the NSW Liberal Party.

In 2000, the school captain was Dominic Perrottet. The former premier, who is not accused of any wrongdoing by ICAC, reportedly spoke at a recruitment event run by the Reformers.

Ex-students told the Herald the school, at Dural in the city’s north-west, cultivated a strictly conservative atmosphere that guided students into Opus Dei-run study centres and in some cases prepared them for celibacy within the priesthood.

“It really felt like Orwell’s Big Brother, in that you were just constantly monitored,” said Tim Pocock, who attended Redfield at the same time as Dominic Perrottet and Assaf, who briefly trained to be a priest.

“Half of the teaching staff were members of Opus Dei. There was the mentoring system, where each student is assigned these mentors who would monitor them. And everywhere there are parents, cousins, brothers, uncles. It’s a very close-knit, very conservative community.”

Another ex-student named Alex, who withheld his family name as he is still involved with members of the school community, said he felt he was being steered in the direction of the priesthood by mentors assigned by the school and at study centres, attended by many students after school hours.

“You’re essentially surrounded by people who are either supportive of Opus Dei or are members of it, so it’s inevitable that you sort of absorb that worldview, including being suspicious of outsiders,” Alex said. “The wider world is seen as full of sin.”

Opus Dei, a secretive and highly conservative organisation within the Catholic Church, has only 600 to 700 members in Australia – a sliver of the Catholic population of just over 5 million, according to religious historian Paul Collins.

Redfield was founded in 1986 by the Parents for Education Foundation, or PARED, a registered charity formed in part by Opus Dei members. Opus Dei supplies chaplains to the school.

“It was established by parents inspired by the educational philosophy of St Josemaría Escrivá, the founder of Opus Dei,” a school spokesperson said. “The school is independently governed by its own board and is not owned or operated by Opus Dei.”

PARED runs three other schools in Sydney – Tangara in Cherrybrook, Montgrove College in Orchard Hills and Wollemi College in Werrington.

The charity’s annual financial report for 2025 shows it in a healthy financial position, with an annual operating surplus of $4.4 million and more than $111 million in net assets.

The charity received $24.2 million in commonwealth funding and $6.3 million in state funding last year, the report says.

The Redfield spokesman distanced the school from the ICAC inquiry, saying it “has had very little impact on the day-to-day life of the school”.

“The matters before ICAC concern a small number of former students acting in their personal capacities many years after leaving Redfield and are not in any way connected with the operation of the school.”

But even before the ICAC put the Reformers’ Redfield connections in the public domain in counsel assisting Peggy Dwyer’s opening address to the corruption inquiry, the schools were “in a bit of a state of siege”, Alex said.

“They are very sensitive to media coverage and criticism from outsiders,” he said.

Redfield, an all-boys school, and its sister school Tangara, were investigated by the NSW Education Standards Authority in 2023 after former students publicly raised allegations, including that the schools were recruiting grounds for Opus Dei, that female students were advised against receiving the HPV cervical cancer vaccine, and that homophobia was rife.

The NESA inquiry findings are unpublished, but no adverse findings were recorded against the schools.

“Both continue to be fully registered, have an unblemished regulatory record with both NESA and the Australian Government Department of Education, and continue to maintain the highest standards of student wellbeing, safeguarding and governance,” a Redfield spokesman said.

Asked if the school welcomed gay students, the spokesperson said: “Redfield welcomes all students whose families seek a Catholic education and who are willing to participate in the life of the school. Every student is entitled to be treated with dignity, respect and care. The school expects all members of its community to treat one another with respect.”

The school rejected claims its mentoring system is, in part, a recruiting tool for Opus Dei.

“Its purpose is to support parents and to assist students academically and personally, including in areas such as goal setting, study habits, character development and wellbeing,” the spokesman said.

“Participation in religious activities is voluntary, consistent with Catholic schools generally. The suggestion that mentoring exists as a recruitment mechanism for Opus Dei or the priesthood does not reflect the school’s purpose or practice.”

Pocock, who is gay, remembers his mentoring experience at Redfield differently.

“Once every two or three weeks, we’d leave class, walk around the school grounds and talk about my development as a young man. There was a concerted effort to make me more ‘masculine’. They talked about how I talked, how I walked. When I was being bullied, the inference was always that it was my fault. I was told, ‘Stop making yourself a target.’

“The bullying I experienced at school was very much targeted towards the fact that I was gay,” said Pocock, a nephew of Damien Tudehope, who has not been accused of any wrongdoing at the ICAC inquiry but has stood down from the NSW opposition frontbench when he was called to give evidence.

“It was clear that they felt it was legitimate because they felt backed up in their minds by scripture and God himself. Whenever the Mardi Gras was on, there would be 24-hour vigils in church. There was a lot of talk about the gay agenda.

“There was a lot of emphasis on ‘purity’. Even kissing – we had a guest speaker come to address the class about how it is immoral to kiss before marriage because kissing leads to arousal.

“We were taught there are sins everywhere, basically. You can’t avoid them.”

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