Found: the alleged pedophile the royal commission said was dead

By Matthew Denholm
Australian
December 10, 2014

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/in-depth/found-the-alleged-pedophile-the-royal-commission-said-was-dead/story-fngburq5-1227150549730

AN alleged pedophile teacher who evaded arrest and was believed by a royal commission to have died is living a happy retirement in rural New Zealand, The Australian can reveal.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Abuse has heard Ronald Thomas, now 77, habitually and violently abused boys when he was a young music teacher at Hobart’s elite Hutchins School in the late 1960s.

Former Tasmanian police chief Richard McCreadie has given evidence that Thomas confessed to child abuse in 1970, but fled to South Africa days before he could be arrested, forcing an end to the investigation.

The commission, which has focused its Tasmanian hearings on allegations of a pedophile ring of up to eight teachers at the establishment school in the 1960s, believed Mr Thomas had died, naming him on that basis. However, The Australian yesterday found Mr Thomas alive and reflecting on a “happy and productive life” — including more than four decades teaching in New Zealand — as he shares his autumn years with a same-sex partner in quiet North Island dairy country.