Sickening details of abuse at prestigious Sydney school
A Royal Commission has heard sickening details of abuse at a prestigious all boys private school in Sydney.
The inquest, which began on Monday, is investigating claims students at Knox Grammar School were shown pornographic material, given alcohol and sexually assaulted by a number of teachers during the 1970s and 80s.
In his opening remarks, Knox’s lawyer Geoffery Watson SC, apologised on behalf of the school.
"There is no excuse," he said.
"The school owed a primary responsibility to those students, and to those parents, to keep them safe from this sort of thing.
"The school humbly and sincerely apologises for its failure."
Five teachers have already been convicted of child sex offences and allegations have been made against a further three teachers.
ARREST WARRANT
On Thursday, an arrest warrant was issued for a former teacher at Knox who failed to turn up for a hearing.
Christopher Fotis was due to give evidence on Tuesday but did not show up.
David Lloyd, counsel advising the royal commission, said police were searching for Fotis and if he was found he would be brought to the hearing.
Fotis was never charged with offences at Knox but was jailed in Melbourne for sexual abuse offences at a school there after his time at Knox, in Wahroonga on Sydney's north shore.
The inquiry is investigating an incident in 1988 at one of the boarding houses, MacNeil House, when a person wearing a Knox tracksuit and balaclava hid under a child's bed and sexually assaulted him.
Mr Lloyd said although the person's face was concealed by the balaclava a number of the boys in the dormitory believed the offender was Fotis.
The boys were later told police arrested the intruder - "an Asian man" - but the commission has found no evidence that police were ever informed of an intruder or a sexual assault.
Fotis left MacNeil shortly after the incident and resigned from Knox a year later when he was found by police masturbating in his car outside a school in Melbourne.
POLICE NOT TOLD
Revelations have also emerged that the incident at MacNeil House was reported to the headmaster but not to police.
Timothy Hawkes, a former teacher at Knox, was in charge of the boarding house when the assault happened in 1988.
On Thursday, Dr Hawkes told a royal commission hearing he rang then headmaster Ian Paterson about 5am to report the incident, which he described as "bizarre and extraordinary and extremely worrying and even frightening".
It was not his role to ring police, he said, but he expected the headmaster would.
However, he was never interviewed by police nor, to his knowledge, were any of the boys.
Dr Hawkes said there was no history of intruders getting into the dorms.
Under questioning from counsel assisting the commission David Lloyd, he agreed that because of the layout of the boarding house and the fact that the intruder was wearing an older style Knox tracksuit it would suggest the person was an insider.
The witness said once he reported it to Dr Paterson his focus was on the pastoral care of the boy, known as ARN, and the other boys.
He did not think it was his place to report it to police.
"I had every confidence that the matter would be dealt with by a very experienced headmaster and by his assistant (Stuart Pearson), who himself was a trained policeman."
Mr Pearson is also listed to appear before the commission.
When Dr Hawkes was asked if his faith that the matter had been reported to police was undermined when no officers came to investigate, he said he still could not be certain his superiors had not taken the matter up with police.
He said he had no recollection of boys raising immediate suspicions that the intruder was either Christopher Fotis or Damien Vance, two resident masters.
Vance, who was later convicted of one count of sexual assault, has already given evidence.
Dr Hawkes said that as the weeks went by there was increasing speculation the intruder may have been an insider and the "two most talked about in equal degrees of likelihood ... were Mr Fotis and Mr Vance."
The witness also said there was a meeting with students at which Dr Paterson spoke but he could not recall if the headmaster said an intruder had been caught.
He said he did not leave that meeting with the belief that an intruder had been caught.
Mr Lloyd: "Did Dr Paterson say to the boys in this speech that the intruder was an Asian man?"
Dr Hawkes "No, he didn't, not from my memory."
He said if someone had been caught it would have had an electrifying effect on the community.
There would have been phone calls to parents and queries about the court case and this did not happen.
CHILD SEX ABUSER SUSPENDED FOR ONLY SIX MONTHS
A former teacher who admitted showing pornography to students at Knox in the 1980s continued teaching there until he was arrested for sex abuse more than 20 years later.
Craig Treloar thought he'd be sacked after admitting showing pornographic films to boys in 1987, but was instead allowed to pick the timing of his six-month suspension.
After returning from his suspension at the start of 1989, Treloar remained at the school until his arrest for child abuse in 2009.
He was sentenced to a minimum two years jail in 2010 for abusing boys at the school, but has also denied forcing his victims into sexual acts.
On Wednesday, he told the royal commission that, after admitting to showing porn to students in 1987, he was suspended from teaching for six months.
Treloar asked headmaster Ian Paterson if his suspension could be delayed - a request Treloar said was brought to the school council.
"He came back. I can't tell you when, but he did come back and confirmed that the council would accept me starting at the beginning of 1988 and taking off the last six months of the year," Treloar said.
Treloar said he became distressed when he heard Dr Paterson wanted to talk to him.
"I thought my career was over ... that I would be sacked," he said.
The commission has heard Treloar admitted showing boys heterosexual porn, but evidence he also showed them videos depicting bestiality and pedophilia went undiscovered because the school held no investigation.
During his appearance at the commission, Treloar described his criminal charges of indecent assault as "letting boys touch me".
"Do you have any self-awareness of how offensive it is to say that the boys wanted to touch you and you let them?" asked Peter Skinner, counsel representing three victims of sexual abuse.
"You forced them to touch you. That's the truth, isn't it?" he continued.
"No, I didn't force them to touch me," Treloar replied.
Treloar, a Knox old boy who left in 1977 before returning to teach in 1982, told the commission he wasn't asked for references when he applied to work as a resident master at a boarding home for year seven boys.
The former head of the Knox Preparatory School, Michael Jenkinson, told the commission Treloar's status as an old boy was valued when he was interviewed for the boarding house job.
After he became aware of the porn, he and Dr Paterson concluded Treloar was immature.
"The only explanation we could give is that he's just being a show off, of the level of his immaturity," Mr Jenkinson said.
After returning from his six-month suspension, Treloar was removed from the boarding house.
PEDOPHILE GIVEN 'GLOWING REFERENCE'
A pedophile teacher sacked from Knox Grammar because the parents of a boy he abused were coming to the school was later given a glowing reference by the headmaster who dismissed him.
Damien Vance had been reprimanded by headmaster Ian Paterson for physically assaulting two boys before he was asked to leave the exclusive Sydney boys school in 1989.
When he left, Dr Paterson gave Vance a letter of service which he used to get a job in a school in Victoria. He continued to teach until a court ordered him to stay away from all schools two decades later.
On Tuesday, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse was told Vance was given 72 hours to resign by Dr Paterson, who did not mention the name of the boy he abused but just suggested he quit because "the parents were coming down".
Vance said he understood they were the parents of ASD, a 14-year-old he abused in 1987.
In 1991, Vance asked Dr Paterson for a reference and received one that praised him as a strong teacher.
"He is highly experienced and he knows the art and craft of teaching, both in the classroom and the sports field," the reference read.
That reference secured him a job offer at an exclusive Victorian school pending reference checks, but the job never eventuated.
In 2009, he faced court for indecent dealings with ASD and was released on a good behaviour bond and ordered to stay away from schools.
Earlier on Tuesday, another former student, Matthew O'Neal, said he was surprised to discover Barrie Stewart, the music teacher who abused him, still working at the school 15 years later.
Stewart was given a suspended sentence in 2009.
The inquest continues.
