AUSTRALIA
ABC – Lateline
[with video]
Australian Broadcasting Corporation
Broadcast: 22/05/2013
Reporter: John Stewart
The NSW DPP says the prosecution of a school principal who sacked a teacher for abusing students but didn’t inform police, would not be in the public interest.
Transcript
TONY JONES, PRESENTER: In the 1970s Brother Anthony Whelan was principal of St Patrick’s College at Sutherland in Sydney. He sacked a teacher for abusing a series of boys at the school, but he did not inform the police. The victims say that if the police had been informed, the teacher may have been prevented from abusing other children. The NSW Director of Public Prosecutions says that prosecuting the former principal is not in the public interest. But abuse survivors say that justice has not been done. John Stewart reports.
JOHN STEWART, REPORTER: Brother Anthony Whelan was one of the most senior Catholic education officials in NSW. In 2008 he received an Order of Australia for services to education.
ANTHONY WHELAN, CATHOLIC BROTHER (Catholic Leadership Video): … was the founding director of Catholic education in the southern region of the Archdiocese of Sydney. I’ve had roles at the Catholic Education Commission level.
JOHN STEWART: In the 1970s, Brother Whelan was the principal at St Patrick’s College in southern Sydney where a group of high schoolboys were abused by a lay teacher called Thomas Keady.
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