Sexual Abuse: School, Church and Cops ‘all Failed’ Students

By Verity Edwards
The Australian
June 4, 2015

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Verity Edwards

Reporter

Adelaide

Serious failings by St Ann’s ­Special School in South Australia, police and the Catholic Church have been found by a royal commission inquiring into the sexual abuse of intellectually disabled students.

The findings by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse concern a school bus driver who repeatedly abused several disabled children in the 1980s.

Brian Perkins was convicted in 2003 of five sexual offences against three students at St Ann’s and sentenced to 10 years, but later died in jail.

Perkins worked at the southern suburbs Adelaide school ­between 1986 and 1991 and was responsible for driving children with intellectual disabilities to and from school.

Many were unable to communicate with their parents and tell them they had been abused by Perkins.

The royal commission found complaints were made about Perkins in 1991, when police found pornographic photos of the students at his home, but he was not convicted for more than a decade.