The former principal of an elite Tasmanian boys’ school has blamed the Hobart Mercury for the school’s failure to apologise to an alleged victim of sexual assault.

William Toppin told the royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse the Hutchins school board was worried about how the newspaper would report the event if the man, known as AOA for legal reasons, went public.

Toppin was principal at the school for a decade from 1997 and was not directly involved with the board’s investigation of the claim, which dated back to 1964, against then-headmaster David Ralph Lawrence.

But he was at board meetings when the issue was discussed and on Monday gave his version of events.

“The board, the parents, were very concerned” at the way the Mercury chose to report on “times when Hutchins has not lived up to” what the school “tries to live up to”, Toppin said.

He denied the school was worried about having its reputation damaged. It was worried the Mercury, which “never lets fact interfere with a good story”, would report the matter inaccurately.

“If Hutchins is involved and a Hutchins kid does something wrong, then dog crosses street headline gets replaced with Hutchins,” Toppin said of the newspaper. “In my view [the school] did not have – and it has never had – fair, unbiased reporting from the Mercury.”

AOA first sought an apology, including an acknowledgement of the abuse, from Hutchins in 1993.

He received an apology more than two decades later in October, before the royal commission started a public hearing in Hobart.

The Hobart leg of the national inquiry has taken evidence from four former students, including AOA, detailing their abuse by teachers at the school in the 1960s.

The commission is examining how the school and Anglican church responded to reports of abuse.