Archbishop defends library name change after abuse handling

By Jennine Khalik, Amanda Gearing
West Australian
April 22, 2017

https://goo.gl/aSYpzE

Phillip Aspinall and Paul de Jersey at the opening last night. Photo by Glenn Hunt

The school, known as Churchie, last year reversed its decision to name the new building after the late headmaster Harry Roberts, following heavy criticism of how he handled students’ sexual abuse allegations against staff while principal from 1947 to 1969.

Queensland Governor Paul de Jersey opened the building, the Centenary Library, last night. Mr De Jersey — a former student and the state’s long-serving chief justice — officiated at a ceremony in November 2015 when construction began and announced then that the library would be named the Roberts Centre for Learning and Innovation.

Victims of abuse at the school demanded a name change following the removal of the name of the Brisbane Grammar School’s former­ headmaster Max Howell from a building on its campus.

Churchie old boys schooled under Roberts — including barrister Tony Morris QC — are denouncing the name change.

The late headmaster’s son Peter Roberts told Alan Jones on Sydney radio station 2GB yesterday he was “disappointed” Mr De Jersey had officiated at the opening of the building. Jones said the “de-naming” was a “rewriting” of the school’s history.

Brisbane’s Anglican Archbish­op Phillip Aspinall is also under intense pressure from dissenters for removing Roberts’s name. Last night he defended the decision, saying the “top priority and prim­ary focus is to do what we can to extend care to victims of abuse and to do everything we can to assist­ their healing”.

The school council took victims’ complaints regarding the name “very seriously” and “thoroughly”.

“It was a responsible decision to make, and I supported the decision,” he said.

He said those who objected to the renaming had different experiences. “Their time here was a very good time. They weren’t subjected to abuse, so they find it hard to reconcile ... these stories of abuse on the one hand with their own personal experience on the other hand.”

One of the Churchie victims, who did not want to be named, told The Weekend Australian the diocese “has done the right thing”.

Pedophiles at the school during Roberts’s leadership included long-serving teacher and boarding master Frederick Roy Hoskins and teacher Hamilton William Nation Leslie.

Archbishop Aspin­all told Mr Roberts in a letter last month that the late headmaster’s participation in letting confessed pedophile Leslie “leave as a respected­ teacher” was a failure of leadership.