St Paul's counsellor victim wore a wire in bid to catch abuser, inquiry told

The Guardian
November 11, 2015

http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/nov/11/st-pauls-counsellor-victim-wore-a-wire-in-bid-to-catch-abuser-inquiry-told

Counsel David Lloyd speaking at the royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse hearing into Brisbane Grammar and St Paul’s School.

A victim of a pedophile counsellor wore a wire to a meeting with his abuser in a bid to catch him out.

The victim recalled St Paul’s School counsellor Kevin John Lynch told him that headmaster Gilbert Case had called during the meeting to check the teen hadn’t beaten Lynch up.

The man’s brother read his testimony to the child sex abuse royal commission in Brisbane on Wednesday.

In the testimony, he recounted the moment, at 19, he realised the depravity of sexual abuse he suffered at the hands of Lynch at the prestigious Brisbane school in the 1990s.

“It came out of nowhere and hit me like a bomb that I must to go to the police,” he said of his epiphany.

He subsequently went to the Boondall police station and was able to organise a meeting with Lynch at the counsellor’s home.

He recalled wearing a recording device to the meeting, where Lynch tried to get him to take a shower and lie down for another “therapy” session.

“I just said, ‘Yeah no, I don’t think so mate’,” the man said.

The inquiry heard the man asked Lynch why he touched him inappropriately during their school sessions, to which Lynch replied: “Look, I could’ve got seven years for that.”

The former student said Lynch then took a call from Case, who Lynch told him had paid for security on his home to protect him from past students coming by.

“Lynch told me that Case was checking in to make sure that I hadn’t beaten him up,” he told the inquiry.

He went to Lynch’s home a second time and said the counsellor told him a “pity story” about being raped and potentially having AIDS.

The commission has previously heard Lynch told another victim a similar story that Brisbane Grammar students had come by and attacked him.

But when the man went back to the police after his second visit, he was told the recordings didn’t provide enough evidence for charges to be laid.This challenge was overcome when he recovered permission slips he’d kept from his school days noting his appointment times with Lynch shortly after.Lynch was subsequently arrested and charged with nine child sex counts on 22 January 1997. He killed himself the next day.

The witness said his life has been plagued with problems stemming from his abuse by Lynch.

The inquiry has previously heard Lynch abused scores of boys while employed as a counsellor at Brisbane Grammar School and St Paul’s throughout the early 1970s until the late 1990s. Many of them were abused multiple times a week.

The royal commission continues.