Arrest warrant issued for missing Knox Grammar witness Christopher Fotis

By Janet Fife-Yeomans
Daily Telegraph
February 26, 2015

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/nsw/arrest-warrant-issued-for-missing-knox-grammar-witness-christopher-fotis/story-fni0cx12-1227239699045

Kings School principal Dr Tim Hawkes has told the commission he informed the headmaster about the balaclava assault.

Christopher Fotis outside Geelong Magistrates Court in 2003.

Christopher Fotis, a former Knox Grammar teacher, has failed to turn up at the royal commission. Picture: Troy Snook

    Kings principal Dr Tim Hawkes failed to report sexual abuse
    Claims he had ‘no understanding’ of his legal obligations
    Former housemaster has ‘no regrets’ about his time at Knox
    Arrest warrant issued for no-show Christopher Themistocles Fotis
    Former teacher accused of groping a student while wearing balaclava

THE headmaster of the elite King’s School, Dr Tim Hawkes, has admitted that he did not know he had a legal obligation to report the sexual abuse of a pupil while a housemaster at another prestigious school, Knox Grammar.

Dr Hawkes told the child sex abuse royal commission that he had thought it enough to tell the Knox headmaster when one his pupils had woken up early one morning in a boarding house being “groped” in bed by a man wearing a balaclava and an old-style Knox Grammar tracksuit.

This was in late 1988 or early 1989 when Dr Hawkes was housemaster at Knox Grammar’s MacNeil House.

He told the commission today that it had clearly been a serious crime and he had expected the police to be notified but did not chase it up with Knox headmaster Dr Ian Paterson or the-then general duties master Stuart Pearson, a retired police officer.

The commission has been told that there is no evidence the police were ever notified, either about a sexual assault or a possible break and enter.

Mandatory reporting laws came into force for teachers in non-government schools on January 18, 1988, the commission was told today.

“I had no understanding of what my legal or proper obligations should have been in relation to matters of reporting sexual assault on a child other than the requirement to immediately notify the headmaster,” Dr Hawkes said.

The well-respected academic, who has written books including one called “Duty of Care” which is the main training course for boarding school staff in Australia and New Zealand, said outside the commission that he had no regrets about his time at Knox.

“I have nothing to regret,” he said.

He said that when he was woken at about 4.30 or 5am of the morning of the assault, he had knocked on the doors of all the resident housemasters and the dormitories and had a roll call.
He said that he believed there was a possibility that the assailant had been one of the school’s staff and heard rumours that it may have been one of the-then resident housemasters at MacNeil, Damian Vance or Christopher Fotis.

Vance, who was later convicted of one count of an act of indecency on a pupil and received a good behaviour bond, has denied in the commission that it was him.

Dr Hawkes said that when both Vance and Fotis were moved out of MacNeil House as resident masters in the weeks following the assault on the pupil, he was never told why.

He said he did not see it as his responsibility to make sure that Dr Paterson had called the police because he had “full confidence” in him.

Meanwhile, a warrant has been issued for the arrest of Christopher Themistocles Fotis, 52, who has failed to turn up to the child sex abuse royal commission.

The former religious education teacher was due to give evidence at the Sydney hearing on Tuesday but failed to turn up and has not been able to be contacted.

Former students claim that Fotis wore a Knox tracksuit and balaclava, hid under a student’s bed and groped the student in late 1988 or early 1989.

He was also found alone in the pitch black in the school’s laundry one night close to the dirty socks and jocks of the pupils and resigned some months later after he was caught by police masturbating in his car outside the elite school.

Counsel assisting the commission, David Lloyd, said this morning that the commission had issued a warrant for his arrest in the wake of his failure to answer his summons to appear.

The commission is liaising with NSW Police.

“In the event that Mr Fotis is arrested and brought in to the hearing in custody, it will be necessary to interpose him as a witness,” Mr Lloyd said.

Fotis has convictions for wilful and obscene exposure to schoolchildren, offensive behaviour and causing serious alarm, the commission has been told.

The commission has heard that the “balaclava man” had fled from the dormitories with a doona over his head but the police were never called.

The commission is investigating how Knox Grammar handled allegations of sexual abuse of pupils spanning 33 years.