Brisbane Grammar and St Paul's Failed to Investigate Abuse Allegations, Inquiry Finds
The Guardian
Two prestigious Queensland schools failed to protect students from child sexual abuse, doing nothing about complaints from victims whose allegations were not believed, a royal commission has found. Former long-time headmasters of Brisbane Grammar School and the Anglican Church-run St Paul’s School did not investigate allegations and failed to ensure students were safe, the royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse has found. The inaction of Gilbert Case, headmaster of St Paul’s from 1979 to 2000, on allegations counsellor Kevin Lynch and teacher Gregory Robert Knight had sexually abused children meant he did not achieve his most fundamental obligation of keeping students safe, the commission said. It found former governor general and Brisbane Anglican archbishop Peter Hollingworth and another committee member knew about allegations that Case had failed to act on an abuse claim when they put him in charge of all of Brisbane’s Anglican schools in 2000. A large number of students were sexually abused by Lynch while he was a counsellor at Brisbane Grammar and St Paul’s. Brisbane Grammar missed opportunities to discover Lynch’s abuse because it failed to keep adequate records of students’ attendance at counselling sessions and their absence from classes, the commission said. A number of complaints were made to senior Brisbane Grammar staff and its headmaster between 1965 and 1989, Maxwell Howell, who died in 2011. Howell took no action after a 1981 abuse complaint, the royal commission’s report released on Wednesday said. He did not investigate the allegation or report it to police or the school’s board of trustees, failing in his obligation to protect the safety and wellbeing of students, it said. “We find that during Dr Howell’s period as headmaster there was a culture at Brisbane Grammar where boys who made allegations of sexual abuse were not believed and allegations were not acted upon.” St Paul’s also failed to act on complaints of Lynch sexually abusing students, the commission said. The commission rejected Case’s evidence that two students never told him they had been abused by Lynch. “Mr Case told the students they were lying and threatened to punish them if they persisted with the allegations.” There were allegations during Knight’s three years at St Paul’s that he sexually abused a number of students. The only action St Paul’s took was that Case accepted Knight’s resignation in October 1984, giving him a favourable reference, the commission said. Knight then taught at Dripstone high school in the Northern Territory, where the school principal immediately referred an abuse complaint to police. Anglican Schools Commission executive director Sherril Molloy said the report highlighted a devastating chapter in the history of St Paul’s from which many people were still struggling to recover. “Our thoughts and prayers remain with the survivors of this horrendous abuse, whom we implore to come forward for care and assistance if they have yet to do so,” Molloy said in a statement. She said measures were now in place to protect children better, including having at least two trained student protection officers in each school, supported by a former police detective inspector, a current detective and a former Queensland government senior child safety officer.
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