Boys" Abuse at School "Common Knowledge"

Sky News
November 20, 2014

http://www.skynews.com.au/news/top-stories/2014/11/20/boys--abuse-at-school--common-knowledge-.html

The sexual abuse of boys at an elite Hobart school in the 1960s was common knowledge but attempts to raise the alarm were stifled, a national royal commission has been told.

A royal commission has heard sexual abuse of boys at an elite Hobart school in the 1960s was common knowledge.

Science teacher Geoffrey Ayling resigned from The Hutchins School in 1966 and changed careers.

"I no longer wanted to work in the school ... because of the prevalence of pedophiles among teaching staff," Mr Ayling, now 75, told a commission hearing in Hobart on Thursday.

At the time there were six teachers among the senior staff of about 16 whom he believed had an interest in boys.

The sudden dismissal of fellow science teacher Spencer George in 1964 was because the colleague had been taking private "three-dimensional trigonometry" lessons, Mr Ayling said.

"This (terminology) is intended to account for the funny positions that the school nurse had found George and one of the students in."

Mr Ayling said he overheard a conversation between then headmaster David Ralph Lawrence, which led him to believe the principal "shared a common interest in boys" and so he didn't raise his concerns in-house.

Instead he consulted friend and lawyer Michael Hodgman - later a Tasmanian politician and father of now Premier Will Hodgman - who was a Hutchins old boy.

"Mr Hodgman's advice to me was to me was that I should say nothing," Mr Ayling recounted. Mr Hodgman died in 2013.

Mr Ayling told the commission the advice also included a warning that the school board would become aggressive and defensive against the claims and that he could be subpoenaed and find himself in "dire difficulty".

"I believe there was a conscious decision by the school to cover this up in the 1960s and keep this information about its teachers from becoming public," Mr Ayling said.

In his evidence, Mr Ayling said he would have lost his career and house had he spoken out.

"Although the experience of these students was common knowledge, everyone just turned a blind eye and let things be as they were," he added.

"At that time everyone wanted to carry on as if it had not happened."

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse is examining how the school and the Anglican church reacted to reports of abuse.