AUSTRALIA
ABC News
By Brad Ryan
A director of Catholic Education has admitted a systemic failure of child safety policies allowed a paedophile teacher to abuse students at a Queensland school over a two-year period.
The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse is sitting in Brisbane this week to hear evidence about how teacher Gerard Vincent Byrnes continued to molest students at a Catholic school in Toowoomba for more than a year after the allegations were first made.
Byrnes, the school’s child protection contact, molested 13 female students aged between nine and 10 at the school in 2007 and 2008.
Toowoomba’s director of Catholic Education, John Borserio, agreed on Friday with the assertion by counsel assisting Gail Furness that child safety policies in place at the time completely failed.
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