School Boss Won't Confirm Abuse Knowledge

By Nathan Paull
The Australian
November 6, 2015

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/latest-news/we-couldnt-admit-liability-grammar-chair/story-fn3dxiwe-1227598950041

AN elite Brisbane school boss has refused to concede a former headmaster lied about knowing students had been sexually abused by a pedophile counsellor.

BRISBANE Grammar School board chairman Howard Stack sidestepped questions about the school's knowledge of the abuse while giving evidence at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse on Friday.

It came despite the inquiry hearing from multiple former students and their parents who claimed they had told then-headmaster Max Howell and senior teachers as early as 1979 of sexual abuse by counsellor Kevin John Lynch.

Dr Howell, who died in 2011, repeatedly denied he had knowledge of Lynch's abuse - an assertion he took to his grave.

Mr Stack told the inquiry, now in its fifth day in Brisbane, that he believed former students' claims that they had complained to Dr Howell at the time of the abuse.