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Knox Grammar: Pedophile teacher who showed porn to pupil avoided sack

By Ean Higgins
Australian
February 25, 2015

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/knox-grammar-pedophile-teacher-who-showed-porn-to-pupil-avoided-sack/story-e6frg6nf-1227238540919

[with video]

A PEDOPHILE teacher at Sydney’s prestigious Knox Grammar expected to be sacked after being caught showing pornographic videos to a student, but instead stayed at the school for another 22 years, during which time he abused other boys.

Craig Treloar, convicted in 2010 for sexually abusing three boys, was asked at an inquiry this morning how he felt when, in 1987, he was called into the office of the headmaster, Ian Paterson, and confronted with the pornography complaint made by the boy.

He said he admitted to the pornography charge, but said he was not asked by Mr Paterson whether he had engaged in any more serious misconduct.

“I most likely would have said no, because I was too scared,” Treloar told the inquiry.

“I was quite distressed. I thought my career was over, I thought I’d be sacked.”

In later testimony, Treloar admitted under cross-examination, that had at that time Mr Paterson or his officers interviewed other boys, it would have been discovered that he had sexually abused boys.

Mr Paterson consulted with the Knox school council, and Treloar was told he would be moved out of the school boarding house where he lived, and suspended for six months — subsequently delayed, at Treloar’s request, until the second half of the following school year.

The Royal Commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse heard on Tuesday from a mother of one student sexually abused by Treloar around 2002, who told the inquiry her son had been progressively emotionally destroyed to the point where he spent 200 days in a mental hospital.

“He was a beautiful boy,” the mother said, saying because of the abuse perpetrated by Treloar, he had be become depressed, violent, and unable to go to university or hold down a job, and once tried to end his own life.

Treloar received a jail term with a two-year non-parole period.

“Treloar got out of jail before (my son) got out of hospital,” the mother told the inquiry.

Treloar, when asked about the charges of which he was convicted, said one of them involved “letting boys touch me.”

Under cross-examination, Treloar denied he “forced” the boys to touch him

He said he had remorse.

“From the moment the videos were exposed in ‘87, I’ve had to live with that, and I don’t say ‘poor me’,” Treloar said.

“I’ve had to live with that, and I’ve constantly thought, over the years, about how my actions might have affected those who were my victims.”

He agreed under cross-examination that “a great deal of damage” had been caused to his victims.

The inquiry has heard evidence that between 1970 and 2003, during most of which period Mr Paterson was headmaster, Treloar and five other masters abused boys under their care, but not one incident was reported to police.

Treloar and four other teachers at Knox were tried and convicted after some boys reported the crimes to police in 2009.

Treloar said he was a Knox old boy, and had applied for a job as resident master through a former schoolmate who was also employed by the school, and was not asked for written references, referees, or whether he had any criminal convictions.

In earlier testimony, another convicted former Knox teacher, Damien Vance, told the Commission that he had no recollection of an episode in which a blow-up doll was found in his car.

The counsel assisting the commission, David Lloyd, asked Vance a series of questions about events in 1988 surrounding an incident known as the “Balaclava Man” affair at a Knox boarding house.

A person wearing a school tracksuit and a balaclava was discovered sexually abusing a boy in a dormitory around 4.30am, and chased by other boys out of the dormitory with a doona over his head before escaping into the night.

Vance gave evidence that the other resident master at the boarding house, Chris Fotis, had moved out of soon after the incident, and not long after resigned from the school.

The commission heard that, for the second time this week, Mr Fotis, who is due to give evidence, was not present.




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