Culture of Abuse at Hutchins School: Hearing Told

Echo Netdaily
November 27, 2014

http://www.echo.net.au/2014/11/culture-abuse-hutchins-school-hearing-told118087/

Venerable William Hutchins, first Archdeacon of Van Diemen’s Land, after whom the Hutchins School was named.

Rumours of sexual abuse at Hobart boys’ school Hutchins were so rife in the 1960s there was a commonly recounted verse around the city.

‘Get a woman, get a woman, get a woman if you can. If you can’t get a woman get a Hutchins man.’

It was a ditty that stuck in the mind of one former student, now aged 60, who has recounted to a royal commission his abuse at the hands of three Hutchins teachers.

Giving evidence under the pseudonym AOE, the man told how music teacher Ron Thomas touched and rubbed against him while the pair sat at a piano.

‘I would try to get up and run away but Thomas would catch me and hold me on the floor face down,’ AOE said.

It was just one of many stories told to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, which heard five days of evidence in Hobart, closing on Tuesday.

Witnesses outlined a culture of sexual abuse at the school in the 1960s at the hands of four teachers, including Thomas, then-headmaster David Ralph Lawrence, Lyndon Alfred Hickman and sports teacher Ken ‘Ted’ Dexter.

Along with another witness who described Dexter as ‘perverted’, AOE recalled the teacher making boys strip in the school change rooms.

‘Dexter made the entire class of about 30 boys stand naked along the gym benches in front of their lockers and then Dexter went around and used his hands to weigh everyone’s testicles,’ AOE said.

On another occasion AOE was sent to Lawrence’s office to be disciplined where he was told to remove his pants.

The headmaster then fondled himself while staring at the boy’s naked buttocks before ‘tapping’ the child with a cane and sending him back to class.

British-born Lawrence who became Hutchins headmaster in November 1963, was a common offender among the witnesses.

Married with four children when working as headmaster, Lawrence is described as handsome, ambitious and vibrant in a history of the school published in 2013 and tendered as evidence.

But the same book acknowledges his hasty resignation from Hutchins in 1970.

‘A sense of death overshadows Lawrence’s departure,’ the text reads.

Sensational evidence given by retired Tasmania Police commissioner Richard McCreadie on Tuesday included Lawrence’s admission to police in 1970 that he abused a student.

But before he could be arrested, Lawrence resigned and returned to the United Kingdom.

Mr McCreadie was a junior detective in the Hobart sex crime unit in 1970 when he took a statement from a boy aged about 16, claiming to have been abused by Lawrence.

‘He went to Lawrence’s office and they had sex on a brown chaise lounge,’ he said of the boys statement.

When Mr McCreadie subsequently went to Lawrence’s office, he heard not only a surprising confession, but also saw ‘signs of sexual activity’ on the lounge.

The boy also complained he was abused by Thomas, who was interviewed and admitted molesting the student.

It was about two weeks later when Mr McCreadie went to Hutchins to arrest the pair, only to be told both had left the country: Thomas to South Africa and Lawrence to the UK.

‘In some ways I thought the problem had gone to South Africa and gone to England and that we were to get on with other things,’ Mr McCreadie told the commission.

In those days it was not common for extradition to be sought in matters other than murder, said Mr McCreadie, who went on to serve as Tasmania Police commissioner for 12 years until his retirement in 2008.

He said no inquiries were made with authorities to confirm the men had left Australia and that in 1970 such crimes were ‘treated with respect and investigated’, but the police department was more concerned with hardened criminals.

Lawrence continued teaching in Europe and also worked as a hairdresser before his death in 1979.

Victim AOA, now 65, was 15 when abused by Lawrence.

In 1993 he contacted Hutchins to report the abuse, seeking acknowledgement and an apology from the school.

It was to be the start of more than two decades of frustration for AOA during which he repeatedly told the school he did not want financial compensation, just an apology to help him deal with the past.

But the school refused.

‘I believe that if I had received acknowledgement from the school in 1993 and an apology it would have been a significant step in my road to recovery,’ AOA told the commission.

Despite lengthy investigations by staff the Hutchins board said it could not verify AOA’s claim.

However a change of heart came in 2014.

In October, just weeks away from the start of the commission’s public Hobart hearing, AOA received an apology from Hutchins principal Warwick Dean.

‘I regret that this apology was not given to you at an earlier time,’ Mr Dean wrote in the letter to AOA.

The principal insisted it was coincidence that the letter to AOA was signed on the same day he made his statement to the royal commission.

In any case, the apology came too late for AOA.

‘I feel f***ing insulted by it,’ he said.

On Tuesday this week, the school issued a media release apologising to the four witnesses for their hurt and distress.

Former headmasters who investigated the claim made by AOA denied they worked to cover up the case to protect the school’s reputation.

The royal commission, chaired by Justice Jennifer Coate, will consider how Hutchins and the Anglican church handled reports of abuse at the school.

Tasmania’s Anglican bishop John Douglas Harrower told the commission his role at the school was that of ‘culture bearer’ and that he had no power to instruct the board to apologise.

Despite this, in 2002 he advised the school to say sorry.

‘I personally would have wished that the school had given an apology, a fulsome apology,’ said Bishop Harrower, who has been head of the church in Tasmania since 2000.

Nine more Hutchins victims have come forward since the commission was launched, the school confirmed.

The hearing has been adjourned until December 18 when further evidence will be taken in Sydney.

Hutchins apology, November 25, 2014

The Hutchins School today repeated its apology to the four former students who appeared before the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

The Hutchins School Board wishes to apologise for the hurt and distress caused to each of them.

The Board accepts the four former students of the school were sexually abused by members of staff in the 1960s.

The Board recognises that child sexual abuse is a crime. The School has established independent counselling for former students affected by child sexual abuse.

The Hutchins School will continue to assist the Royal Commission.