Victim Advocate Furious about Shock Paedophile Deportation

By Timna Jacks
The Age
November 2, 2016

http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/victim-advocate-furious-about-shock-paedophile-deportation-20161102-gsgfz5.html

It took time for Ken Mahlab to find his voice as a child abuse victim advocate. The Melbourne businessman and father of two preferred to keep his sexual abuse out of the spotlight.

But the former Geelong Grammar student is coming forward to tell his story, after learning that his abuser could evade criminal charges due to an extraordinary inter-agency blunder.

Victim advocate Ken Mahlab gave testimony to the Royal Commission into child abuse. Photo: Penny Stephens

Fairfax Media revealed in September that Victoria Police was set to charge a 74-year-old paedophile with abusing students at the elite school between the late 1960s and mid-1970s, and in 1980. However, the man, who was an Irish citizen, was deported by the Australian Border Force to Ireland before facing charges under tough new laws introduced in 2014.

Australian Border Force have said they were not aware of the police investigation. It is understood that Victoria Police did not know the man was deported until it was too late.

Ken is raising the alarm about the risk he believes the man poses to children in Ireland, and is urging for the man's extradition.

"There's been a bungle, and it can be fixed," said Ken. "He's alive in another country, go and get him, bring him back, make him face trial, and let the courts decide whether or not he is guilty."

Ken, 51, is believed to be among 10 victims who have told police they were abused by the man, whose name has been suppressed by the Federal Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Abuse. He recalls that he was molested at least once by the former teacher off school grounds on a weekend trip in the 1970s.

"There are some things you don't forget. You don't forget a face, you don't forget a name, you don't forget a smell, and I don't forget that."

The former student at the school's Glamorgan campus from about 1970 to 1975, reported the abuse to Victoria Police in mid-2015 and made a disclosure in a private session to the royal commission earlier this year.

Police told Ken they they were receiving disclosures relating to the abuser until days before his deportation.

"In the officers' defence, they were trying to build a complete case… they were trying really hard to do a good job," he said.

"My understanding is that they had a robust case to be answered."

Ken received a call from a Victoria Police detective informing him of the deportation around August this year.

"The police officer was irate and outraged that this happened. … and [he] had the incredibly unpleasant task of having to call all the people he was dealing with and saying to them that the person they had been pursuing had been deported."

Four former students told the royal commission last year they were abused by the same man.

One victim said the teacher instructed senior students to perform sexual acts in underground rooms, and he was also accused of dropping his pants in a biology class – an act described by the then headmaster as "blotting his copy book".

The man, who was also a former Geelong Grammar student, was convicted of child abuse offences on four separate occasions and served time in a Queensland prison.

Ken is also speaking out to advocate for more stringent systems in schools to protect children from abuse. He said creating new policies was not enough.

"Schools will have a policy, and the problem with a policy is that it's not a living document it's something that sits on the shelf and people refer to, if required. Schools have to be active, they have to be judicious, they have to assume that they're looking for the people who are wanting to subvert the policy.

"You need an implementation strategy and accountability system that goes with it."

Ken, who also spoke to ABC's 774, said he has not allowed the abuse to override his life, and is not part of any civil lawsuit against the school.

"The people who are responsible in my mind are no longer there, to the best of my knowledge. I think Geelong Grammar and other school are as horrified by this, as we all are."

The paedophile was convicted of child abuse in 1987 and was given 200 hours of community work. In 1995, he pleaded guilty to exposing a child to pornography and indecently dealing with a child, receiving a minimum of four months in prison.

In 2005, he pleaded guilty to two charges of child abuse and was jailed for a minimum of 10 months.

Victoria Police spokeswoman said police were investigating and would not comment on whether the man's extradition had been sought.

Asked if the man's extradition had been sought, an Attorney-General spokesperson said: "As a matter of longstanding practice, the Australian Government does not disclose if it has made, or intends to make, an extradition request to a foreign country until the person is arrested or brought before the court in the foreign country pursuant to that request."

A spokesperson for the Department of Immigration and Border Protection said the Irish Grada were notified of the man's "removal and criminal history due to the serious nature of his criminal offences".