Royal Commission into child sex abuse continues

By Matthew Killoran
Courier-Mail
November 9, 2015

http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/royal-commission-into-child-sex-abuse-continues/story-fntwpug1-1227601645990

THE FORMER South Australian Education Minister who gave a glowing reference to a music teacher accused of inappropriately touching and rubbing 13-year-old boys says they were friendly but not “mates”.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses into Child Sexual Abuse has been sitting in Brisbane and today focused on paedophile music teacher Gregory Robert Knight.

The Commission has been told former Minister Dr Donald Hopgood was in the same band as Knight.

Knight resigned from a South Australian school in 1978 following allegations of inappropriate behaviour towards students and, by 1981, was a music teacher at St Paul’s in Bald Hills, Brisbane, where he continued to abuse students.

It has heard Dr Hopood rescinded Knight’s dismissal from the South Australian school to allow him to resign after the investigation into allegations of inappropriate behaviour, then later wrote him a reference.