Former Brisbane Grammar Headmaster Says "Unlikely" He Dismissed Abuse Claim

By Joshua Robertson
The Guardian
November 4, 2015

http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/nov/05/former-brisbane-grammar-headmaster-says-unlikely-he-dismissed-abuse-claim

Raymond Cross, a former headmaster of Brisbane Grammar’s junior school, leaves the magistrate’s court in Brisbane on Wednesday after giving evidence to the child sex abuse royal commission. Photograph: Dan Peled/AAP

A former Brisbane Grammar junior school headmaster accused of dismissing a student’s complaint about suspected serial paedophile Kevin Lynch says he considered seeking the counsellor’s advice about his own son years later.

Raymond Cross, who the royal commission has heard told an alleged victim in 1977 that he should “not make up stories and that Lynch was a well respected man”, told the inquiry he could not rule out the conversation happening but that it was “most unlikely”.

Cross told the royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse in Brisbane on Wednesday that when his second son had “settling issues” at Grammar in 1992, he “considered consulting [Lynch] about my son” even though Lynch had since moved to St Paul’s Anglican school.

The commission’s nine-day hearing is probing responses to Lynch’s suspected ritual sexual abuse of more than 60 students under the guise of “relaxation therapy” for more than two decades at both Grammar and St Paul’s.

Cross said while he found the green and red lighting system signalling student access to Lynch’s locked office “quite odd”, he was unaware of any formal record keeping or oversight of Lynch’s contact with students.

He said he felt shocked, disgusted and extreme disappointment in his own blindness to widespread allegations against Lynch which he only learned of through media reports after the counsellor’s suicide following his being charged with indecent dealing with a St Paul’s student in 1997.

Cross said he asked his eldest son if he had heard allegations about Lynch when he attended Grammar from 1985 to 1989 but was told there was “just the odd rumour”.

When pressed by counsel assisting the commission David Lloyd, Cross said his son did not elaborate about the rumours, nor did he ask him to.

Former Grammar deputy headmaster David Coote told the royal commission he first learned the allegations against his friend Lynch on the day of his funeral, where he gave a eulogy.

Coote said St Paul’s headmaster Gilbert Case, who told the school community that Lynch had died from heart attack, told him privately that Lynch was being investigated over impropriety with a student, but not that he had been charged. Case is also listed to give evidence to the inquiry.

He returned to Sydney that night and did not discuss Lynch’s situation with anyone from Grammar, including former headmaster Maxwell Howell, Coote said.

Coote, who repeatedly expressed annoyance at being asked to recall precise events 30 years ago, denied a claim by an alleged victim of Lynch’s at Grammar known as BQA that he had asked about his “inappropriate relationship” with the counsellor, whom BQA said he loved more than his parents.

Barrister for Grammar Walter Sofronoff earlier challenged BQA’s account of being interrupted in Lynch’s office with his pants down by Howell, who then called him a “sick individual” before eventually forcing him out of the school.

“I suggest to you that it didn’t happen,” Sofronoff said.

BQA replied: “I suggest that you weren’t there. It did happen.”

He later dismissed Sofronoff’s contention that no one would criticise him for a memory failure by saying: “You’ve just accused me of fabricating evidence, so I think you are.”

Coote later said that his first response to any claims by a student such as BQA, whom he recalled as a “dark and sullen child”, “fairly undisciplined” and “certainly very troubled”, would be to disbelieve him.

“My instinctive response would be it was probably not true but that wouldn’t mean I wouldn’t investigate it,” he said.

Coote conceded that his “default position” of an uncorroborated account of sexual abuse by a student was to disbelieve them, but that he had never been presented with such an allegation.

He agreed the system of ensuring the welfare of students in Lynch’s care, which required no formal reporting back by the counsellor, relied on “complete trust” in him but rejected Lloyd’s suggestion this was “completely inappropriate”.

Lloyd asked: “At a time when you must have known that Lynch was seeing boys one-on-one in a room without windows and with locked doors – on that scenario, Mr Coote, that is a situation that is positively alarming, don’t you agree?”

Coote’s reply drew murmurs from the public gallery: “No, because he was seeing dozens of boys in a steady stream in those circumstances and it’s simply, that’s a common counselling situation.”

The former Grammar deputy said he was yet to conceive of a “better system” of oversight of counsellors, among whom high levels of confidentiality were required for the sake of student privacy.

He said he had never been aware of any “gossip” about Lynch.

The hearing continues.