Sex abuse teacher delayed suspension

Sky News
February 25, 2015

http://www.skynews.com.au/news/top-stories/2015/02/25/sex-abuse-teacher-delayed-suspension.html

A former teacher at an elite Sydney private school convicted of sex abuse was allowed to delay the timing of his suspension after admitting to showing pornography to students in the 1980s, a national inquiry has heard.

Craig Treloar was later sentenced to four and a half years in jail, with a non-parole period of two years, in 2010 for indecently assaulting three boys at Knox Grammar in Wahroonga.

On Tuesday Treloar told the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse that after admitting to showing porn to students in 1987 he was suspended from teaching for six months, but made a request for it to be delayed.

'The decision was that I'd leave the boarding house, that I would lose my teaching position for a period of six months, basically the first six months of 1988,' he told the commission.

But Treloar asked the school's then headmaster, Dr Ian Patterson, if the timing of his suspension could be delayed - a request Treloar said was brought to the school council.

'He came back. I can't tell you when, but he did come back and confirmed that the council would accept me starting at the beginning of 1988 and taking off the last six months of the year,' Treloar said.

Treloar returned to teaching in the first term of 1989 and remained at the school until his arrest for child abuse in 2009.

On Tuesday the commission heard that former teacher Damien Vance was given a glowing reference by the school after being reprimanded by the headmaster for physically assaulting two boys.

Vance, who left Knox in 1989, continued to teach until a court ordered him to stay away from all schools two decades later.